Photo credit: ustm66 on Pixabay

I never had that dream where you show up for class and there’s a test and you forgot to study, but last night, I had the writer equivalent: I showed up at a book event, and I didn’t have a price sheet. (For those who have never done this kind of event, allow me to provide a smidgen of context. The price sheet is the sign that tells prospective buyers how much your books cost. Most people want to know this information, and not everyone is comfortable asking. If you don’t have a price sheet, you are left with two choices: either put price tags on every single copy of your book and hope the buyer doesn’t mind having to scrape off the adhesive, or spend the day repeating, “Nineteen dollars, including tax” like a mantra.)

In my dream, the person in charge—a writer I’ve met in real life who is actually very kind and supportive—frowned at my lack of preparedness. I left my spot (in the very back of the venue) and sought out various ways of making the sheet, from accessing the complicated computer setup of dear friends who looked thirty years younger than when I’d last seen them to availing myself of paper with decorative borders and trying unsuccessfully to write the necessary information with a gold Sharpie, except that I couldn’t spell “Books.” (This, at least, was familiar since I’ve dreamed many times that I was unable to punch in a phone number accurately.)

My dreams aren’t usually this vivid or specific. It’s rare that I remember them more than a few seconds after wakening. But this one has stuck with me. The strangest part is that when I woke, I wasn’t thinking about my dream-self’s failure to be prepared. Instead, I found myself shaken by another question that arose from seemingly nowhere: what if I have no more stories to tell? What if the reason I’ve struggled so much with this book is that I know it’s my last one and I don’t want it to be over? What if I have nothing else to say?