Inspiration

For me it was the challenges that used to appear regularly on the LSF calendar that provided inspiration. Writers were given guidelines around which they were obliged to construct their stories and that always gave me ideas to work on. I do realise that there were good reasons why the challenges were discontinued but I do miss them.

Not often I get my stories from dreams. But there's one that I did get that way, 'Not Her Best Day'. I didn't dream the events of it, though; I actually dreamt I was sitting at a table, writing it by hand on paper. I'd written nearly half of it by the time I woke up, and luckily it stayed with me in almost all its details.

myrkassi
As I previously said I can't say much, but I'll try to help by giving starting blocks. Frankly, I don't know if you can because I have an extremely self disciplined mind, and an uncanny eye for detail. From memory, I can draw something I saw 30 years earlier and it will be fairly accurate. 10 years ago I would have been more cocksure, but my memory is slipping. Early Onset Alzheimer's? Perhaps... (30-60 is considered "early").

First, and this only came to me in my thirties, I have not had a nightmare in over 20 years. I've made peace with my primitive part of my brain. (if you disagree, I suggest for you to look over an MIT paper from 2005 "the primative part of our brain may be smarter than we think") In my opinion, dreams are a way for the primative part of the brain to "talk" to you. It warns you when it thinks your being stupid, those are nightmares. Now there is two parts of your conscious brain, the logical, or rational, and the creative side. Personally, I use my rational hemisphere a LOT during my waking hours. My creative side doesn't get a workout that much, and that is a second thing I just automatically do. I can think with my creative brain while I sleep. I have gone to sleep with a problem, and creatively worked out the problem while I slept. Third, and this is the most difficult part to understand, the more you try to force yourself to dream something, the less you will.

Again, this is your own mind. It's not a foreign mind, it's you, like a twin, or mirror image. The more you push at the mirror, the harder your image pushes back at you. Again, it's about making peace with yourself.

A method to knowing you have this down pat is by having a lucid dream. My first lucid dream was before I knew there were lucid dreams, when I was 8 or 10. It wasn't much, but it starts out small. Again, the harder you force it...

Be a little excited by keeping a dream journal. Don't look at it as a chore. You can't fool yourself. If you want to remember dreams, you will, and if you look at it as a chore, then you won't remember them, because you don't want to.

Here's the funny weird thing, the woman/man of your dreams is you. You aren't connecting to a hive mind, or the minds version of the interweb. Everything in your dreams, is you. Your worries, your concerns, hopes and... dreams, are all you.

Some say what you eat causes dreams, I've had mixed results with that. I've eaten the same boring food for 5 years for dinner and had the wildest, most vivid dreams. I've eaten spicey, odd food, which is said to prompt weird dreams and slept restfully and only woke up with indigestion.

Now for the bad news, I've rarely had sexual, or spanking dreams. Per se. Given what I've said that it's you in your dreams, if you have sex with a woman, it's you. Likewise with spankings.
Me? I'm a top, so, women in my dreams don't like to submit. I'm not a switch or bottom, but I imagine it's the same for them. If you want to bottom, so will your man/woman of your dreams. I don't know how a switch would be.

Now, does that mean I can't get huffy with my dream girl? Nope, but have you ever tried to run away in a nightmare and felt like you were running in mud? Same thing. Now, and this is the tricky part, I've had dreams leading up to a spanking, again, I like/remember details, so it's not just the act that's fun, but what leads up are juicy details to me. So, sometimes it's needed to write out the missing parts. Here's where it gets tricky, your primative mind can sometimes be a right proper bitch, as a muse. Change a dream too much, and your muse might get huffy. "Don't want my help, fine, do it all on your own!" At least that seems to be how my dream muse is. My suggestion is to write down everything, then use the ones that fit your desired outcome.

You might also try a mantra. nothing complex, simpler is better. I used to tap my head as many times as the hour I wanted to wake up at on the pillow. Wake up at 6? tap my head six times on the pillow, I usually woke up 5 minutes before the hour.

Again, be too anxious, and you'll get nothing. I hope that helps.

Thanks! My mind isn't self-disciplined at all. I've never kept a dream journal as such, but I do keep paper and pencil by my bedside in case ideas come to me.

I haven't had any luck with odd foods either; I often have toasted cheese as a bedtime snack or late supper, and it doesn't seem to have any effect on my dreams at all.

I can't remember when I last had a nightmare, though I do get frustrating dreams where I'm trying to do something and every time I'm about to succeed the dream resets to the beginning and I have to start all over again.

I've had the odd moment or two of lucid dreaming, but no idea how to develop the skill further.

When I was younger, and had to memorise something for a class, I'd read it over last thing at night, sleep with the book under my pillow, and read it over again before getting up - and it worked! Perhaps an indication that it's the more logical part of my mind that's in charge when I'm asleep.

All this is to say; thanks for the suggestions, and I may give them a try, but I suspect that we've different types of minds, and what works for you may not work for me.

myrkassi
I think you took me a little too literally. I simply meant a log devoted to written dreams. I think in terms of order. I also think in terms that might be very verbose, thereby a pad would more sense than a single loose piece of paper. By having a small pad, to write small notes, you're priming your mind to notice small details, and make small, short dreams.
I don't care if you keep a laptop nearby with a file folder devoted to dreams, just PRIME your sleeping mind that you are ready to write whatever it comes up with.

likewise with the mantra. Just reiterate "I'm going to dream" the same way you might count sheep. If you look at this as a chore, it won't work. If you like to dream, and look forward to it, you'll dream. What you will dream about and if you will take control of it, is between you and your dream. That's a poor choice of words. It's more about guiding. To paraphrase Fame, you don't want to grip you dream tightly like your cock. You want to hold it gently, respectfully, and gracefully ...like your cock.

Yes, we all have different minds and bodIes, but we all can generally walk and chew bubble gum at the same time, without falling flat on our face. Some can only walk a mile, where others can run a marathon. I can write a story, so can others. But they can write numerous stories to my onesie twosie. The point is, don't sell yourself short, that you can't do something without trying first.

For reference anything milk based usually puts you into a deep peaceful (dreamless) sleep. At least that's what it does for me.

PhilK

I've had third person perspective dreams as well. One that I wrote was Tales from the Bad Girl Bar. However, part of it was just pointless dreaming. I took a shorter previous dream, and inserted it as a stage show to the end of the other dream, edited the stage show dream for added dialogue (since it had none), and thereby got a full story.

To amend what I said earlier, I can third person perspective watch a proper, rousing, full-contact spanking in my dreams, I just can't partake in one from the first person perspective.

Another dream (non-spanko) I had that was closer to what you describe, was Poor Little Angel. In short, it was about a cruise ship to another planet, that went Titanic. I knew destination, date, names and personalities of over 25 crew and passengers, half of whom died.
The key to using dreams in stories, is to write the story down as quickly and completely as you can and not shirk on details, even the weird "that doesn't make sense" details. Let your wide awake self read and make sense of what your half awake self wrote.

Don't focus on sentence structure and grammar. Just write it in stream of consciousness. Just one long run-on sentence if you have to. Just write it quickly and as completely as you can.

I'll amend my previous comments to add one cautionary note. Your primative mind might outrageously steal from copyrighted material. By all means, write out a dream as fully as you can (when you are fully awake), but then read what you've written to see what might have been the inspirational source of your dream. It might be original, or an original rewrite of a movie you saw last week.

To further what I said before, I can have very passionate sex in my dreams, but the closer you get to climax, the more your conscious mind will become aware (in other words, you'll wake up). So, part of the trick to anything sexual in dreams, is to simply sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. Again, I made peace with my primitive mind, that sometimes means "enjoying" the nightmares as much as the sexy stuff.

When you can realize "it's just a dream" while in your dream, then you are ready to start ccontrolling them.

I set up a computer file of just potential story ideas as they come to me; there are well over 100 last time I looked. Some of them are nothing more than a 'catchy' title that need a story attached, but others have a rough outline of where to go with it. I've said before that I normally work on multiple stories simultaneously (I have 11 in various bits and pieces in a separate working file at the moment).

Very rarely do I work on a single story from start to finish, but the latest one loaded here, Lending a Hand (and a Belt), was a rare exception. The idea came to me from a drawing of a train conductor bumbling into a father spanking his daughter. That gave me the gist of an idea and suddenly we were off to the races, although the final story in no way resembles what inspired it. I happened to have the time to knock it out from start to finish, basically making it up as I went along. But that hardly ever happens.

I get ideas all over the place. The series I wrote about discipline in a corporate office came from a dream of my director producing a school paddle and using it at the office. Some come from real life events, things I saw happen in school, or maybe that happened to me and I changed details and embellished them to a degree. A few are spanings I actually witnessed or at least heard in a retail establishment I was wither shopping or working in. Again, details got changed, and parts got embellished a bit. Some things just come to me out of the blue, or I'll see something in a movie or TV show that triggers a story. Very few stories get written from start to finish in one sitting. As of now, I have 6 stand alone stories and a series in various stages of being written. I work on them as the mood strikes and time allows.

Like several other authors have stated, almost everywhere! Events from my past (which I then tweak and add to to make them spanking fic appropriate), current events, things people say, pictures, music, the weather etc. Sometimes an idea seems to randomly pop into my head. Also writing prompts are great for trying out something new. All these things are why my stories are mainly whatever I had the inspiration for, and not so much my own personal fantasies.

I think now I've started writing these stories, my mind is 'programmed' into finding new story opportunities. It's amazing, but it can be frustrated as well, because sometimes I want to finish something first before coming up with five new ideas. I've actually written a story that was a sequel to something I still want to write!