On crazy dreams and getting unstuck in the novel

Last night I dreamed I received a cake via email.I'd been doing one of those cursory email checks to see if I had anything important to respond to, and deleting junk mail. So when I wound up with the cake, I wasn't exactly sure who had sent it to me. Still, I was thrilled! Which one of my friends, students, or relatives, had baked a cake for me? Was it a thank-you for something I'd done, an early Christmas gift, or a random act of cakeness?I went back through my email to make sure I knew whom to thank. While doing so, I began to sample the cake. Mmmmmm. Pineapple upside-down cake, and almost as good as mine. I had to make sure not to eat too much and to save some for my husband. I found out that the cake came from an advertisement by an insurance agent. How disappointing! I examined the packaging of the cake again. No, it wasn't homemade. The box said "Swiss Colony." Sigh. Still, it was pretty cool to get a cake in my email.When I mentioned the dream to my husband, he said, "So it baked when you downloaded it?""No," I replied. "It just appeared. Magical things can happen in dreams. Clearly this dream was fantasy, not science fiction."In other news, I'm approaching the end of Act I of the novel. I'm currently at 29,324 words (not counting some rough writing ahead in Act II) and expect to finish the Act in another 5,000-8,000 words. My last chapter was a bit bloated so I think the total word count may slim down some.I had gotten stuck because after the last chapter, my protagonist goes to a different setting. I hadn't decided whether the journey to get there was important enough to spend a chapter on. Would anything really significant happen on the way? I certainly could throw in some plot twists or close calls (she's a fugitive, after all), but came to the conclusion that the really interesting stuff happens in the new environment. I'll summarize most of the journey and the characters can later argue about some things that happened during it.Last night, instead of writing the new chapter, I spent about an hour doing some brainstorming and fleshing out of the setting and minor characters who are to appear. Then I researched clothing styles for a while. I feel much more confident now about writing forward. When I get stuck, I brainstorm in a journal rather than typing. That way I just have to write what comes out and don't have a delete key to hit. I write about writing, e.g., "I think the city needs to be like [insert description]" or "[Character X] is quite devout and insists the entire household attends chapel daily." Sometimes I ask questions: "Should character Y have [awkward experience] on the journey?"I don't really have any rules; I just brainstorm whatever bits of plot, character, or ideas might come into my head like a journal entry to myself. Then I realize I'm not as stuck as I thought. In a worst case scenario, my journal might read like me whining about how I don't know how to write the next part of the story or chapter, but after a while, I get sick of "listening" to myself whine and start actually getting some ideas down. I haven't used this technique for a while for the current novel, and was just reminded last night how valuable it can be.