July: DREAM
Writing prompts and reflections to support you all month long
Welcome back to #AcWriMoments, a yearlong experiment in purposeful scholarship creation. On the first day of each month in 2024, we offer you a guidepost with a unique theme and simple prompts for living out the theme as a scholar and a human. Return to the guidepost all month long, anytime you need support for cultivating SACRED (strategic, artisanal, creative, reflective, embodied, delicious) moments of communion with yourself and your work. May these offerings encourage you in your pursuit of whatever goals and visions you deem worthy of your attention—the most precious resource you have.
Theme for July 2024: DREAM
The Periodic Table of the Elements coalesced for chemist Dmitri Medeleev in a dream. Philosopher Rene Descartes recounted three dreams through which his take on the scientific method emerged. Today at MIT, researchers at Project Dormio, following in the footsteps of Edison, Tesla, Poe, and Dalí, are exploring the creative possibilities of hypnagogia, “a semi-lucid sleep state where we all begin dreaming before we fall fully unconscious.” The researchers note that in this state of free association and distorted space-time, inventors and artists alike have long found a “window of opportunity” where otherwise impossible insights and syntheses can take shape.
The scholarly enterprise across the centuries is bursting with examples of knowledge-builders who have reached beyond strictly scientific techniques when constructing knowledge within the parameters of their disciplines. Alongside the dreams of sleep that come unbidden are the dreams of daytime that can be consciously cultivated: states of free association and distorted space-time that occur in the midst of waking life. Waking and sleeping alike, dreams are spaces of possibility and creation.
Entertaining as we may find anecdotes about the rare revelatory dreams of famous thinkers and writers, both sleep-dreams and daydreams can guide our everyday writing lives too. The windows of opportunity offered by dreaming are open to all of us if we look out for them.
This month, we invite you to DREAM. Capture your night-dreams the moment you wake up so you can ponder the secret wisdom they may hold, or let your mind wander through imaginal realms during daytime reveries, and see what progress (tangible or intangible) your visions inspire. Let go of the possible/impossible binary for a spell, and simply dream. There’s no telling what insights might find you in that liminal space.
To aid in your dream explorations this month, we offer you seven writing prompts based on our theme of DREAM. Several are inspired by the visual image above: seven goblets, as July is the seventh month of the year. Please feel free to replace or supplement our prompts with your own variations!
7 PROMPTS FOR JULY
Notice your daydreams. Set a timer for 7 minutes and write about an image you find inspiring. We suggest using the collage of seven goblets above or the 7 of Cups tarot card. What dreamscapes do you see in each of the goblets? What scholarly ambition, fantasy, or fear does each goblet represent for you?
Notice your night-dreams. If it works for you, keep your phone by your bed so you can grab it the moment you wake up and record a voice note describing whatever you can remember about your night’s dream. Alternatively, you can capture your dreams in a notebook. (You may have to try for a while until you have a morning when you actually remember your dream upon waking.) Revisit your voice or text notes later and consider how your dreams relate to waking life. Do they shift your attention? Show you a priority to focus on? Reveal a secret wish?
Build a daydream. Draw your own set of 7 goblets and fill each one with a picture, pattern, or design representing a dream that you hold for yourself and your writing. Label each goblet if you wish — or let the images speak for themselves. Keep your creation in a place where it will occasionally catch your eye and inspire you.
Trace dreams through time. Consider the dreams that you once held for yourself as scholar, the dreams that sustain your writing life today, and the dreams that guide your way forward. Which of those dreams have come true already? Have any thwarted dreams led to new, unexpected opportunities? What do you learn about yourself and your work by tracing your dreams through time?
Create a dream-catcher. Designate a space to record night-dreams, daydreams, or both in the coming months. This may be a special journal or a small box where you stash dreams scribbled on separate scraps of loose paper. Start with the ones you capture via prompt 2! Situate your dream-catcher physically near your more conventional research and writing materials to remind yourself that all your ways of knowing are intertwined.
Engage with your dreams. Dream up your ideal article, thesis, or book — a scholarly endeavor that (so far) exists only in the realm of fantasy. What’s stopping you from realizing that dream, or at least taking a step toward it?
Live the dream. What is one tiny, simple step you can take today to align your scholarly life more closely with your most dazzling dream for the world?
As you live the theme of DREAM this month, what shifts in or out of focus for you? How might you DREAM more deeply, more delightfully, and more audaciously as you move through the rest of the year?
Thank you for joining us for #AcWriMoments! We’d love to hear from you. Please drop us a comment to let us know what you’re learning, trying, and discovering this month.
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These strong faces are motivating to me today. Interesting prompt.