The weather here has been absolutely gross for three days. I’m glad today, though it looks cloudy, at least doesn’t look like rain. I have been wanting to get out and take a walk with my husband, but I don’t really even want to go outside in this weather.

I had a strange writing dream last night. I haven’t been doing much work on my NaNoWriMo novel since December started, and one reason for that is that I have a major plot hole that introduces implausibility. It sounds really strange to say that in a novel in which Shakespeare and Jane Austen are brought forward into the current time that I can’t figure out how to get them identification and passports without having them resort to shady fake documents (and how do they even know people who can make fake documents that fool authorities? or how do they even have money to pay for them?). It’s really bugging me. Man, in historical fiction, you can move people around so easily. They can stowaway on a ship or even book passage legally, and no one glares at their ID for five minutes to determine whether they might be carrying fake identification and could be a terrorist.

At any rate, last night I had a writer dream. I was at NCTE. I saw lots of my friends there, but I was also being followed by some shadowy folks like a bad spy movie. English teachers are classical spies, right? Anyway, out of the blue, Stephen King and Joe Hill (who is Stephen King’s son) showed up at my hotel room with printed copies of my NaNo book covered in blue ink. I have no idea how they got my ms, but they had clearly spent some time critiquing it well. Joe Hill told me it was pretty good, but about 1/3 of it was crap (which is pretty much my own estimate). Stephen King nodded vigorously to indicate he agreed with his son’s assessment. I was thrilled that Joe Hill thought 2/3 of my novel was something I could work with, and I couldn’t wait to read their suggestions on how to fix the 1/3 that wasn’t. They were like my perfect deus ex machinas or something like that. I wish a real writer would jump in solve my ms problems instead of dream Stephen King (who was hard of hearing in my dream) and dream Joe Hill. I was so shocked and happy that they had come to help me with my book.

I think my brain picked them because even though I haven’t read a lot of their work, I think highly of them as writers because I know a lot about their process. Of course, I learned about King’s through [amazon_link id=”1439156816″ target=”_blank” ]On Writing[/amazon_link], and Joe Hill has discussed his on his blog. Plus Joe Hill is very opinionated on Twitter, and if he thinks something’s crap, he calls it out as crap—precisely why I felt his assessment of my book was actually high praise. In real life? I’m not sure either of them would like my book. It doesn’t seem like their thing. But they were both as nice as they could be in my dream.

photo credit: seyed mostafa zamani