IT ALL STARTED WITH A DREAM

I didn't intend to write a book. Writing has always been something I have done through journal keeping, creative writing or thirty page college papers on mind numbingly boring topics. Yet I never gave it much thought or longed to complete a novel. Until I had the dream. For those of you that have read my book the dream I had was the scene in which Alec's hand appears out of the darkness of the orchestra pit. It was a simple dream, however it stuck with me days afterward.

I jotted down a short story based on the dream which in no way resembled my now completed novel. It was dark. Really dark. And gory. To be perfectly honest the fact that it came out of my own psyche scared me a little bit. To prevent my husband from reading the twisted tale and thinking his wife needed to talk to a mental health expert I tore it up and started over. That meant research. Scouring the web lead me to key points in my story; the gryphon, the Celtic origins, Rhodes College, Gainesboro, The Shamrock Inn, even the clock tower in the center of town. The pieces seemed to fall into place and my story began to take on a life of its own. That is when the game changed. The entire story was trapped in my head and I couldn't get it out fast enough. I would be in the middle of a conversation with my husband and an idea would come to me and I would have to stop everything to go write it down. (He REALLY enjoyed that.) To quote the wise Robert Palmer "my mind was not my own." All hours of the day and night I was planning and plotting the adventures of Celeste and her siblings. I had tapped into my creative spicket and the ideas flowed. Luckily I have since learned the fine art of storyboarding so I can resume functioning normally.

My point is it started with a simple dream. The process that followed of watching the story come together, polishing it up through careful editing and even dissecting it through the feedback of others awakened a passion in me that I had apparently ignored for years. I always wrote, it was just what I did. Yet I never knew how much I would love it if I fed that passion instead of stifling it. God gives all of us gifts that He wants us to use and develop. What's yours and are you using it to its full capabilities?