James Crumley Wordsmithing

Ever been reading along and come upon a piece of writing that makes you say to yourself, Wish I'd written that? That happened to me yesterday when I was reading The Right Madness by James Crumley. I found this at page 50 of the paperback:

But the bad dreams were always waiting in the shadows, flirting around the fringes of sleep. They didn't mean anything, I knew, but that was sometimes hard to tell myself when they blundered like drunken bears into my unconscious.

I particularly like the blundering drunken bears simile.

I have a character who has bad dreams, too. So I make take a simile lesson from Crumley. My guy's dreams are different,  more like wolves than bears, and they don't blunder in, they lurk and prowl in the shadows waiting for a chance to charge in.