At Easter,
at some point during a family gathering, I found myself sitting with four of my
sisters-in-law. I don’t know how we got to talking about our dreams. One of
them asked me if I still wrote mine down. Yes, of course, I’ve been noting them
for many years. This practice has evolved over time, but it’s still just as
important. My sisters-in-law were clearly interested in the subject and
suggested I write an article about it in my blog. So here’s the story of a
little dream that could have gone unnoticed but instead produced unexpected
results.
Dream.
May 2012. I was with a few people, I don’t really know who, I don’t
really know where, and one of these people suggested I write a haiku rather
than a narrative text. I responded that that was a good idea, and that it
should appeal to the young people the text in question was intended for.
My second
children’s novel, La fille des pour
toujours, had come out in March. So there were “young people” in the
picture, not to mention my children to whom the dream might be referring.
Despite
these leads, and although that same evening and over the following weeks I
wrote some haiku, I didn’t really follow up on that dream. In fact, it remained
there, unfinished, noted in my journal, nothing more, until I opened my new
Facebook page in late November. My dream then came back to me. I began writing
more haiku that I published on my author page and then shared on my personal
page. I had hoped to attract young people to that latter page, which was
basically devoted to promoting my children’s novel.
That didn’t
work at all. The young people didn’t show up. However, I
had a lot of fun coming up with these haiku. I felt alive, joyful, as I created
them and I didn’t feel like stopping. So I kept making them.
By 2013, I
had quite a few of them. I put them together into a collection with other poems
that I already had and then reworked. Then I decided to shape my project into
more of a finished product: I would publish my haiku myself. I got the process
going and this collection, stemming from the dream I’d had in 2012, finally saw
the light of day last summer. I’m very happy with it.
I’ve come
to think that the young people in my dream actually reflected the young person
in me, that part of me who is full of ideas and willingly takes on new projects
without worrying about her age.
Copyright © Denise Nadeau
