I keep dreaming about my adult novel, the one I’ve decided to send out to indie publishers but wanted to make a few character tweaks to before doing so. In the daytime I don’t have even a moment to think about that novel—with all these freelance writing assignments I said yes to, I’ve booked myself solid for two months.

But at night, under cover of sleep, the novel peeks its little head out. Last night I dreamed that I was talking about the end of the novel to a group of three redheaded girls. I knew two of them from work and the third, I’ve never seen her before. They asked is the end sad or happy? I said I truly believe that it’s happy, and hopeful, at the end. Maybe I’m the only one who sees the hopefulness, I said. E found it sad—and I turned to him (E was suddenly beside me) and he started saying all these wonderful things about the book (even in my waking life E is very supportive) and the three redheaded girls said they wanted to read it and E said they would soon, because it was going to be published. E seemed to know something I didn’t. Then I was pulled out of the conversation, suddenly aware that it was in the room with us, the novel. It was like a person, like when you’re talking about someone behind their back and you feel so sure they’re hovering just out of sight, listening in.

I haven’t yet left the apartment to write. Still need to get dressed, pack my bag, find my computer cables and my shoes.

I woke with a solid headache that’s now fading away thanks to two green-and-white coated pills.

The dream that woke me involved my novel, peripherally. It’s hazy now. In the dream I saw an announcement in a magazine. No one had told me, but I had apparently won second place in a contest with my book. There was my name, the name of my novel, and… the name of a poem I wrote in college? Eeek. (Be thankful I no longer write poems.) And the people who had chosen the winners of the contest may have been a literary agency, some important person behind the choosing that I wanted to find. Should I send her my novel? I thought. Will she be my agent? The search was not yet over in my dream, it seemed. In my dream I was meant to keep trying. But before I could find the woman, not even a telephone number, I was in a small camper, being driven over bumpy roads. The man driving was my estranged father, which was weird not because I haven’t seen him in many years but because I was just writing about him yesterday. (The story from yesterday is starting out autobiographical—I am not sure how far I am going to allow myself to go.) I didn’t want to be near my father in the dream. I was two seats away, but we didn’t talk. An actor from a terrible movie was in between us, and he tried to talk to me. He was telling me about Santa Monica, a place I visited about a year ago and said—in another life, if I were rich and pretty and healthy and didn’t need to work—I could live. I didn’t like him, and he lived in Santa Monica. I didn’t like him one bit. Thankfully, I had to pee so I escaped him to a back room, which was no longer inside a camper, now a hotel room with a little girl who wouldn’t let me in the bathroom. Two men were also in the hotel room, a suitcase opened up on the freshly made bed. In the suitcase was a map and NASA seals and golden letters that spelled out the word G R A V I T Y [something]. (To understand: my novel has that word in the title.) One of the men was an astronaut. How did I not know he was an astronaut?! I thought in the dream, forgetting that I had to pee. I watched him with great interest, trying to remember every detail for my book. (To understand again: my novel features an astronaut.) The man’s map in the suitcase was of… I think it was called Gravity Village. It was important for me to remember this. The place was maybe on the moon, or on another planet, or here somewhere where the camper was going. I needed to know. But the astronaut was in an argument with the other man—they were talking about tanks. What does exploring space have to do with tanks? I thought, confused. The two men wore lime green. I wanted to remember that so I repeated it again and again in my head: Astronauts wear lime green. Astronauts wear lime green. Astronauts wear lime green. Put that in the book, I told myself. Don’t forget.