During a panel at DC FanDome, G. Willow Wilson (The Dreaming: Waking Hours) and Neil Gaiman (The Sandman) discussed the influence of their nightmares on the writing of their respective series.
Wilson and Gaiman were also joined by writer Dirk Maggs and actor Michael Sheen. The Dreaming, written by Wilson and inked by artist Nick Robles, began a new chapter in the well-established Sandman saga, which was first published in 1989.
Wilson’s point of entry to the story came when she asked herself, "Who [in the Sandman Universe] haven’t we heard from yet?" At the time she was grappling with this question, Wilson said that she was also struggling with insomnia. At one point, while lying in bed, she thought, “How happy I would be to have a nightmare right now because it would mean I was asleep.”
This thought inspired her to create the character of Ruin, a "nightmare who doesn’t want to be a nightmare." Ruin is, literally, a nightmare who falls in love with the person he was sent to torment.
Gaiman responded to Wilson’s story and explained that when he was first writing Sandman, he had frequent nightmares. However, he started to wake from those nightmares feeling happy, because they had provided him with material for the series. Eventually, the nightmares stopped, and Gaiman assumed that "whoever was sending them" had given up because they didn’t get the intended results.
The Sandman was recently released as an audio drama, and a Netflix adaptation is currently in development by Gaiman and David S. Goyer.