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If you allow your power of imagination to work through you it can change your life in wonderous ways.

      Take for example the brilliant writer Elizabeth Strout. One day in her home, she suddenly  saw this imaginary robust woman by her dishwasher with hands on her hips. the woman was glowering at her. That "figment" of Stout's imagination turned out to be the inspiration for the character Olive Kitteridge which she developed into an iconic best seller.

             Though I am no Strout, that kind of awesome power fell upon me one day. And it changed the course of my life for the better.

              I was on a cleansing diet, just a little bit of rice and lentils each day. Three times a week I got to climb into it a body box– a wooden container shaped like a human body. Only my head was exposed while the rest of me was steamed to release toxins.

            After ten minutes, I was up on the massage table so that  masseuse could work warm oils into my skin. She was massaging my back when an powerful figment in my imagination took over in my mind’s eye.

           A fantastic woman was gazing up at the fly trap she had hung from a tree. I knew at once that her name was Georgie. Dumbfounded, I listened as the story of Georgie began in my head.  And with it gushed images, words, feelings and ideas.  Like Strout, I did not push the vision away and say,  hell she is too weird. Get her out of my head!

           I was excited. As a creative person, I had been cultivating my imagination for years. Maybe a character for a book was seeking life through me? She reached up for the fly trap, and hurried with it into her house where she placed it in a freezer to anesthetize the flies. After a few minutes, she took it out to tweak one numbed fly to bring to a spider she was raising.

              She was strange, yes, but I felt how much she loved life and all creation. I also felt she was lonesome.

              As soon as I got off the table and tipped the masseuse, I dressed and rushed to write down everything I saw and heard.  After that day, I continued, whenever I could, the story of Georgie which took shape as a novel.

           What happened over the course of many years, is quite surprising. I loved the process of imagining that helped me develop Georgie, her family and friends and the plot intrigues.  I loved it so much, I was no longer concerned about finishing my book! Indeed, I have not yet published this novel. But what came from the workings of imagination are wonderful gifts.

              Georgie inspired me to establish my  Creative Writing Workshop which for 12 years I have been running. Because of my Georgie, I bonded with students and fellow writers and enriched my social relationships.