This morning I woke from my dream wanting to write it as story. I also wanted to get to the gym and sweat. When this happens – when I am in the car thinking or on the elliptical sweating, and I think of a line or idea, I put it in a note on my phone. If I am revising a piece and think of dialogue or a plot turn and haven’t got time to write it out completely, I put it in my notes. Then when I am at the page or screen, I scroll through my notes to remind myself what I thought of at four-thirty in the morning.

I recorded my dream like this:

I still want you
Truth written on scraps of paper, burned
Speaking of girlfriend as fish who misses the other pond, so they must go; if they stayed another year…

Mid-sweat, still thinking of how I might turn a dream into a fiction piece, I added:

I’ve only texted him once before
Word associations

The only thing that landed in my draft, aside from the dream residue want of something you can’t have, was the line I still want you and a wife who misses her home.

I like the idea of a boyfriend affectionately calling his girlfriend a fish, but don’t know why. I also like the idea of a character making word associations as a mental tic, but I would probably stretch it to breaking.

What I really like is that stories keep coming to me.