Imagine That

One of the greatest gifts God gives to a fiction writer is an imagination. With it, He enables us to observe shootouts, car chases, births and deaths. To solve mysteries and relate these events to others. We weave stories together with the joys and sorrows of life. We experience the horror of losing a love one. The elation of falling in love, the conflict of everyday life. We sit at our computer and create new worlds and populate it with our characters.  

  Imagination is a wonderful asset. With it, engineers build bridges connecting cities spanning vast chasms and rivers. Architects design buildings reaching for the sky. Before a vehicle appears on the showroom floor, it was in someone’s mind. Without Imagination, we would still be living by candlelight with our only form of transportation, a horse and buggy.

As writers, we transmit what we see in our minds to paper or screen. We may go over it a dozen times or more perfecting and clarifying the story. Some believe they can write the story once and it’s perfect.  If you can, you’re very fortunate indeed. For the rest of us, we labor day and night. We struggle over each word, sentence, and page. Writing and rewriting until the story flows. Or as some have put it ‘sings’.

Finally the story is told, the book is finished.  Then as our final act, we offer our novel to the reader hoping to connect with their imagination. Thus, we continue the story we first saw in our mind.