A Dream-Forged Artist

The dream tender watches over the flock of ideas, guiding them from the field that they’ve just grazed in to the next lush pasture of inspiration, while making sure that the prowling predators of doubt see no opportunity to attack.

The wordsmith examines the sentence for imperfections, pushes it into the coals, then pulls it back out, red hot, and hammers in a simile that provides a smoother, sharper edge. 

The literary artist steps back from the easel, contemplating the full composition, before darkening the shadow on the villain’s persona to contrast with the highlighting strokes describing the hero.

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This story was inspired by Carrot Ranch’s February 20, 2023, prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less), write a story about what it means to be a literary artist. You can pull from your own experience, re-imagine the idea, or embody something else in a character. Be playful, go deep, and let your story flow. Go where the prompt leads!

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In Charli’s post accompanying the prompt, she reflects deeply on what it means to be a literary artist, and I highly recommend reading her full post if you want to feel inspired and empowered to be something beyond a mere writer.

She describes literary artists as “more than the storytellers of the moment; they are the artistic minds open to the unconscious prompting of our era,” who “do more than spin stories — we spin magic. When we write, we access a part of our brain where few humans dare to go. The imaginal is the deep realm where we dream and the heart still whispers the symbolic language all beings understand.”

She also states, “The more I tend dreams, the better I understand why I’ve connected to the term literary artist. Tending dreams is all the fun stuff I love about creative writing. I can go where an image leads and get blissfully lost. Writer is broad and easy to digest for most, well, writers. Author speaks of professionalism or publishing status and novelist is a specific type of author. We can find many names to fit our roles or identity, but literary artist captures the imagination.”

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