Musings, dreams, and revelries in short stories…
by
Owen Jones
I don’t really know what it’s like to be anyone else, although a writer has to find a way of imagining it in almost every book, but it is not usually so important in short stories.
I read recently that no writer really knows where his or her stories come from, and I guess that that could be true for many authors, but I don’t like people putting words into my mouth, or thinking that they can speak for me.
Dictation
Of my 50-odd novels, several were ‘dictated’ to me by the protagonist. This is especially true of my first series Behind The Smile. Lek, the heroine, would not stop talking in my head until I had written exactly what she wanted to say. That is the reason why many people have noticed that Daddy’s Hobby, volume one in the series, finished so abruptly. I knew that she had a lot ore to say, and that it was far too much for one book, so I just stopped at 112,000 words, and started volume two.
Dreams
Other novels have been inspired in other ways… especially dreams and daydreams. Alien House was inspired by a dream – all 90,000 words of it, whereas Tiger Lily of Bangkok and The Ghouls of Calle Goya are the results of daydreaming.
Short Stories
On the other hand, my short stories result almost exclusively from dreams, and usually include myself, which my novels never do… at least directly. I don’t get scary dreams or nightmares, most of them are humorous. When I was a kid, my parents encouraged us to write dreams down and discuss them over breakfast. I miss my parents and my dream-retelling, although now I dream about them often instead.
If you write down and retell your dreams, you soon come to remember them without writing them down. So was it for me for decades, but somewhere down the line, I forgot to remember them. Unfortunately, that state of neglect continued for too long… Until recently, when I started to remember them again about five years ago.
Analysis
I have tried to analyse my dreams / short stories many times. However, there is nothing in them, unlike the dreams in which I talk to dead relatives and long-lost friends. They too may have no deeper meaning. After all, not all chats with friends do. However, they mean to me that I was talking with a real person, who may or may not be dead.
I hope that you like my short stories, and strongly encourage you to leave comments beneath them. Please, join my blog, or / and to my podcast feed. If you do, you will receive notifications of the stories automatically in your email as new ones appear.
Also, I encourage you to share my tales with your friends using the social media buttons. In fact, it would be a great help to me as a writer.
Copyright
To those who would seek to print my short stories as their own, or reprint them in full on their websites, I advise against it. They are covered by copyright. However, if you can convince me of your good intentions, I may grant you the right to reprint one or more in full. Just ask
Best wishes,
Owen
P: I can hardly wait to read your feedback 🙂
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