Why I Write: I Write to Bring My Dreams to Life

I'm in the back of an open military truck, although I am not a soldier. Soldiers in the truck are throwing heavy sandbags of some kind out the back of the truck as it moves through countryside. Each one explodes upon landing, and I feel troubled by the damage it causes. I calm myself by reminding myself that I am not one of the ones throwing sandbags.

As I awaken from this dream, it instantly dawns on me that I am the dreamer who created the scene. I am with my wife in a small village in Guatemala, near Lake Atitlán. I know immediately that the soldiers in my dream are American, and that my nation has sent them to Guatemala. Indirectly, I am the cause of the damage I see in my dream. My plans for the day change immediately. I must write about my dream and all that it brings up for me.

On that day, I wrote for 5 or 6 hours nonstop. On the previous day, my wife and I had visited the site of a recent deadly mudslide that buried a village, killing over 1,000 people. The highly traumatized guide who showed us around also took us to the Peace Park, a site commemorating the murder of 13 Maya civilians by Guatemalan soldiers during the former right-wing dictatorship in Guatemala. In my dream, I tried to disavow responsibility for the military violence in Guatemala and the shooting of Maya civilians. But I knew that U.S. military aid and secret Central Intelligence Agency involvement had supported the Guatemalan government.

This sequence is one key to why I write. It is to manage and to express intense emotions that I have been holding at bay. As Elias Canetti (1973/1978) wrote in The Human Province, “All the things that one has

forgotten scream for help in dreams” (p. 213). This dream screamed loudly. Other dreams, usually less intense, also prompt me to write. The reverse occurs as well. Freud (1900–19