The Writer’s Dream
Posted on March 18, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 10 Comments
Last night, I dreamed I was in a supermarket, and they had two of my books in the book racks. And I remember that I actually stopped all the action in my dream, went back and counted the number of individual copies (four copies of The Ghost Brigades, two copies of The Android’s Dream). Because I’m a total loser writer geek like that. But, dude. Two separate titles in a book store at the same time. In multiple copies! Even in a dream, that’s good news.
Supermarket real estate is very precious, so books that make it there have *made it* which is a totally understandable dream. But, I still don’t think of supermarkets as book stores.
I should have taken a picture, but the last bookstore I was in, had two SCs of OMW, two TADs and one TLC.
Not a supermarket mind you, but still cool.
And, if dreams were all tidy and stuff, Android’s Dream would be stacked next to the mint jelly, and Ghost Brigadescould be found bracketing the licorice jellybean display. (Both of them are quite seasonal.)
I have been in a grocery store (a little small to be called a supermarket) which had multiple copies of two of your titles on the shelf. And they only had 100-120 different titles. So it does happen.
My local supermarket had the MM of OMW, several copies as I recall.
Of course, you just posted this so we’d all give you the egoboo of telling you, yes, supermarkets have stocked your books too, didn’t you, you little dickens?
I’ve seen TGB in Wal-Mart! Try not to faint. :-D
Whenever I see a book in my dreams, I open it, read as much as possble, and tell myself to remember this upon awakening. Several of my publications, fiction, poetry, and mathematics alike, came to me this way.
An excerpt on books in dreams, a recurring motif in the works of Jorge Luis Borges, from:
April 6, 1971
Borges, a Blind Writer With Insight
By ISRAEL SHENKER
The New York Times
… He has written about the irony of going blind and simultaneously becoming director of the National Library. “I take good care that my books shouldn’t quarrel with each other,” he says. I don’t suppose you should have your Bible and your Voltaire side by side. They wouldn’t be comfortable, no? Voltaire might be poking fun at the Bible, or the Bible might be ignoring him, no?”
“When I lost my sight I was rather worried over it, and in my dreams I was always reading. Then somehow I never could read because a word became twice or thrice as long as it was, or rather instead of one line there would be other lines springing like branches out of it. Now I no longer dream of reading, because I know that’s beyond me.
“Sometimes I see a closed book and then I say, ‘I could read this particular book,’ but at the same time even inside my dream I know I can’t, so I take good care not to open that particular book.”
It’s not exactly the same thing, but I picked up my copy of OMW from a SuperWalMart.
Yup, both OMW and TGB have been spotted in Wal-Marts and supermarkets, and not just in my dreams. I am so proud!
John, did you eat Chicago deep-dish pizza? Tell us what you consumed to cause your nocturnal visions, I want some.
I’ve seen both OMW and TGB in bookstores in both Helsinki and Tampere.