daydreaming

Things I Think I’ve Seen

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

Not too long ago I wrote a post about the syndrome known as maladaptive daydreaming. Here is the post for anyone wondering what the term means or how it may or may not apply to me. https://chantelleatkins.com/?s=maladaptive+daydreamingThis week I read another post from my author friend Kate Rigby on the same subject (here is Kate’s blog post : https://authisticwords.blogspot.com/2023/01/maladaptive-daydreaming-in-adhd.html?fbclid=IwAR12MHls3umdJm2qokKK18fwwDhXID-iTxJGEUMACvoaLJWj21WGNArdND8 )and it got me thinking again about daydreaming, imagination, writing and real life and how these things weave together for writers in particular. I started thinking about the host of ‘memories’ I have in my head that may be true, distorted versions of truth or outright daydreams I made up. Some of the ‘memories’ I’m about to describe I have never told anyone about before. I’m not sure why but perhaps it was simply not knowing myself sometimes where truth and reality end and fiction and imagination take off! That aside, I think some of these might make good writing prompts, so here we go:

Image by Aline Berry from Pixabay

The lady in the road.

I’ve never told anyone about this but when I was a child I was sat in the back of our car and we were on a journey but I have no idea where we were going or how old I was. For that reason, I stipulate that I must have been younger than eight, because I have fairly decent memories of life after the age of eight. This is what I remember, or think I remember. We were in a traffic jam. It was not an area I recognise now. I think we were on a day out maybe. It was hot, so probably summer. I don’t recall who was driving, whether it was my mum, dad or even whether both of them were there. I don’t remember if any of my sibling were in the car. I looked out of the back window and saw a woman come running out of a path or an alley. In my head, she had long brown hair that was sort of wild and messy; she was wearing a nightdress or skimpy dress of some sort and she had bare feet. She was screaming. I thought my parents would notice or react but they didn’t. She ran towards the line of traffic and a man got out of his car and ran after her, back towards the path or alley. He left his car door open and his car in the traffic. The traffic then lurched forward and we drove away. I kept looking back wondering what was wrong with the woman and what happened next but for some reason I didn’t say anything to anyone in the car then, or after. I still think about it now but I have no way of knowing where or when this happened.

The boy on the ground.

This one is slightly clearer so perhaps I was a bit older. It was another summer, another day out and another car journey. I have a feeling we had been to the beach or were near a beach. I remember grassy edges to the sides of the road and a group of people milling around on a corner next to a fence. Perhaps they were waiting for a bus or to get picked up by someone in a car. What stood out to me though was the large angry, red-faced woman who had her foot on the head of a boy who was lying on the ground. I remember blinking to clear my vision. Was I seeing this right? What was going on? I remember wondering if he had been really naughty or had just fallen over. Again, it was such a strange and unsettling thing to see, I didn’t say anything to anyone else in the car, but I’ve thought about it again and again over the years, wondering if what I saw was as horrible as it looked.

The creatures in the undergrowth.

Okay, this is a recent one so the memory is clear but I am still not sure what I saw. Just before Christmas I was walking my dogs down the lane and over the little bridge that crosses the Moors river. As we came over the other side of the slope, the dogs all stopped and stared as there was a tremendous scuffling racket in the woods beyond the fence. At first I assumed it was pheasants running around as when they fight or panic they make a lot of noise in the undergrowth. The noise got closer and closer. The dogs were nervous and confused. Something was coming, but what? The trees on that side of the fence are dense and tall so we couldn’t see what was coming, but suddenly two or three creatures shot out under the fence, skidded in a panic and circled right back into the woods again. It all happened so fast that I did not get a clear look at them. They were definitely short, not the height of deer. They were reddish brown in colour. I didn’t see any tails, or certainly not the long bushy tail of a fox, for instance. They were so fast and so close together that I didn’t see heads or faces. My first thought was pigs of some sort but that doesn’t make much sense for the location. It’s quite near a busy main road so I don’t think wild pigs would be released here and there aren’t any farm pigs in this area. Perhaps they were dumped but I kept an eye on the local news, thinking if they were dumped pigs, someone else would see or hear them and report it. Nope. Nothing. They could have been a smaller breed of deer but I’ve never seen anything but red deer and roe deer in this area. I am still confused and the dogs were very spooked!

The scarecrow in the field

Not long after we moved here I was walking down the lane on a cold, frosty morning. There was low lying mist rolling across the fields and something caught my eye. I stood and stared and thought I could make out a scarecrow in the distance, close to some woods. It seemed weird because I’d never seen one there before, but it had that look to it. Arms out, rigid, stick-like body and what seemed to be grey rags fluttering on the breeze. I shrugged it off and kept walking. Only, the next time I looked back, it had gone…

The naked man on the common

This was a few years ago and I still question my vision that day! It was a hot day and I was watching my dogs run on the common, our favourite place. I saw a figure trundling slowly down a hill on the other side and it was not until I drew nearer that I realised it seemed to be a naked man. He was carrying a stick, he had a long beard and he scuttled away as soon as he realised he had been seen. Heading up the same hill moments later, he had completely vanished. I assume he was hiding in the heather somewhere but I’ll never know.

I’m sure I’ve got more but these are some of the somewhat clearer and stranger ones. After each sight, my imagination went into instant overdrive, making up a story and perhaps twisting what I had actually seen into something else. Do you have any foggy memories or sightings that confused you?

Addicted To Writing Or A Maladaptive Daydreamer?

~ ChanAtkins ~ 13 Comments

My name is Chantelle and I am addicted to writing.

Or at least it feels that way… like a drug, a high, like something I crave for and cannot live without…

It’s always like this but its worse when a new story has truly captured me. Last week I blogged about the reasons people stop writing, and I mentioned that as a child and teenager, I wrote constantly and endlessly, before having a 10-year gap where I barely wrote at all. The way I am now is exactly the way I was as a kid and I recently discovered that it may even be a clinical condition. Maladaptive daydreaming is where people daydream so intensely that they subconsciously leave this world for one of their own creation. Within these made-up worlds, they create characters and storylines that they replay and tweak in their heads for their entire life. One person in this article https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/aug/28/i-just-go-into-my-head-and-enjoy-it-the-people-who-cant-stop-daydreaming described it as like putting Netflix on and I relate to that in a big way.

Image by Pheladi Shai from Pixabay

As a child, I was nicknamed cloth-ears by my parents because it appeared I was never listening. I was the daydreamer, the one never paying attention, the one in her own little world. At some point, around the age of eight, I realised I could write these daydreams or stories down and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. I am at the mercy of the characters who live in my head and the drama that surrounds them. I identified so strongly with the people in the interview that the only difference between us was that I write my daydreams down and publish them as books! I kind of think these people are missing a trick if they don’t do the same!

I’ve blogged before about The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series, and how the characters grew in my head at the age of twelve. I’d lie in my bed at night and move them around, like watching a film that I was in control of. I still do this now, every night. As that series will soon have a spin-off and a crossover book, I think it’s safe to say that my daydreams truly have control of me. I’m not sure whether I am addicted to writing, or whether I am an intense maladaptive daydreamer, but just in case you are curious, this is what it feels like:

  1. I can’t stop thinking about my story from morning until night. I wake up with an urge to write and a head load of possible scenes and conversations and then I go to bed and lie awake, dreaming up more. Every night I fall asleep with my characters in my head.
  2. I can switch between worlds with ease. One moment I will be fully submerged in my created universe, hearing their voices, seeing their movements, picking up on every facial expression or nuanced gesture, and the next I’ll be back in reality, teaching a class, paying for shopping, filling the car up with petrol. My mind seems to know when to switch back without too much disorientation.
  3. Having said that, I do sometimes find it hard to concentrate on other things and this is especially tricky when I am writing a new story that is going well. Some stories take time and patience and lots of rewriting, whereas some of them just write themselves. Those are the best but they do make it harder to switch between worlds. At the moment, my WIP is completely taking me over to the point of obsession, and I find it is all I can think about. I find myself drifting off into noticeably thicker daydreams when it’s like this…
  4. I get a nervous feeling in tummy, because I am scared I’ll not do it justice. The story plays out like a film or a TV show in my head and it looks perfect. Perfect locations, settings, characters and dialogue. Fight scenes look flawless yet realistic, dialogue is spot-on, facial expressions are just right and if I could just encapsulate it as it is in my head, it would be perfect. Yet the tricky bit is writing it and trying to make it how it is in my head so that the reader can see what I see. I am never sure I am up to the job and this can make me feel quite anxious at times.
  5. It feels like having a movie on pause when I’m not writing. When I’m not writing, I feel quite torn away from it, quite lost. It’s like I’ve been forced to put a good book down when I am dying to find out what happens next,. It feels like leaving a movie on pause. They are all just frozen until I can think about it or write it again.
  6. I can’t wait to get back to it. The frustration I feel when I cannot think about my stories, or write them, is quite awful at times. I don’t really want to live in this world, but I have to. Because of this, I am constantly longing to get back to my world, constantly pining for it and missing it when I’m not there.

Whether I am addicted to writing or just an intense daydreamer who writes them down, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Writing has saved me time and time again and without it I know I would struggle. What about you? Were you nicknamed a daydreamer as a child? Do you still daydream? Do you write them down? Feel free to comment and share!

Why I Love Writing #4; Nothing Is Ever Wasted

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

I suppose actors must feel like this too. I’m too introverted to have ever given acting a thought, but I can empathise with the urge to play around with emotions and reactions. To consider them, analyse them, practice them even. For this reason, writing offers up another reason to love it. Nothing is ever wasted. Nothing is ever meaningless. Everything I experience or observe in life can be used in writing.

This happened to me today, and then I started thinking about it, which led to me choosing it as the next reason on this series of posts.

I was out dog-walking when some recent worries suddenly caught up on me and I dissolved into unexpected tears. There was no one else around, so I guess my brain just seized upon the opportunity to let rip for a moment or two. My youngest child had a routine operation last week which all went well, but the recovery at home has been a lot tougher than we expected. To check all was okay, I’d called my surgery to request a phone call from the GP who had wanted to see my son as soon as possible. I knew in my gut and my heart that my son was going to be okay, but I guess a number of days holding it in and generally being exhausted had caught me up. I had a little cry about it, but then my mind did what it always does when I get emotional about something.

I started imagining I was one of my characters. I slotted instantly into a book I have not yet written, but have planned and plotted. A potential scene, a very upsetting one, started coming together very quickly in my head. My tears quickly dried up, but in my imagination, as my character, they carried on flowing. Before I knew it, I had walked further than I had intended, and my mind had shifted my worries from my real life into the fictional worlds I so often visit.

It’s fair to say, I used my genuine emotions to imagine how my character was feeling. As the anguish turned to anger for my character, I started to feel pissed off too. I snapped out of it at the appropriate time and felt a swell of excitement for the book I’m not yet ready to write.

I’m not sure if other writers will get this, or know what I mean, but I tend to feel that in my life, uncomfortable thoughts, emotions and experiences are quite welcome, because I can use them to improve my writing. The same goes for boredom, frustration, elation and excitement. Anything. Everything. Nothing is ever wasted or forgotten. The tiniest things, the most mundane of moments, the passing of time in a doctors surgery, the wind in my hair as I wander down a narrow country lane, the people in the distance, the cars passing on the road, the buzzard in the sky, the rain pelting down, the clutch of fear in my gut, the exhaustion pounding at my head, the hilarious thing a friend just said or did, the minor characters who all play their part in the story of my life, everything, anything, all of it is useful. All of it is observed, considered, anaylsed and absorbed. All of it is fuel. All of it is material. alone-2666433_1920.jpg

Why I Love Writing #3; I Get To Live More Than One Life

~ ChanAtkins ~ 1 Comment

Did you ever watch movies when you were a kid, and think why doesn’t anything interesting ever happen to me? You know the kind of movies I’m talking about. The Goonies, The Lost Boys, Indiana Jones, Close Encounters, Stand By Me… Did you ever watch those films and then moan with your siblings that ‘nothing fun ever happens around here?’

More often than not, our lives are ordinary. Mostly, we are safe. If we want adventure, we have to go looking for it, right?

Not if you’re a writer. I think I figured this out at an early age. I fell in love with reading and became addicted to the feeling of snuggling up with a good book, shutting out the real world and allowing myself to become absorbed in a make-believe one, and then I discovered writing could offer the same joy and adventure.

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And it truly does.

My characters live tumultuous lives, with twists and turns, suspense, thrills, and plenty of drama. There is love and hate, obsession, adventure, pain and sorrow, unbelievable lows and amazing highs. I’ve put them through a lot and because of that I’ve been constantly excited, desperate to find out what happens next, eager to be part of the journey.

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It feels like I go through all these things with them. I mean, I have to, as much as possible. When writing a dramatic scene, when describing complex emotions, I have to put myself in the characters shoes as much as I possibly can. I have to think about how I would feel, what I would do, what I would say, and how I would react in the long term. Writing, therefore, makes my life feel like a rollercoaster of drama, events, revelations and reactions. When my characters are scared, I feel scared. And I get just as excited as them when things go right for a change!

Because of this, I often feel like I am living more than one life. And I could choose to live any kind of life I wanted. When writing, whether in first or third person, I’m creating a world I become a part of. I can be any age, any gender, any sexuality, any class, any culture I choose.

I sometimes wonder if this is why I like writing young characters so much. Because I’m reluctant to grow old and feel like my life is constantly passing me by, going far too fast. As a writer, I get to go back and be a kid again. I don’t have to say goodbye to my youth, I can relive it and recreate it however I wish. In real life, there are always things that prevent you from living out your dreams. Things get in the way and hold you back. There are financial restraints and responsibilities and so on. But if I’m curious about something or feel I missed out, I can write about it instead. I can create whatever world I want and live whatever kind of life I want.