How’s Your Imagination Doing?

No, seriously. How’s your imagination doing lately? I’m assuming you’re not seeing dragons waging war and little toad conductors on your train ride to work. I’m also assuming that at one point in your life, you did.

Maybe it’s because Jewels and I are both writing YA novels right now and have been back and forth sharing and detailing plots and characters filled with magic and adventure. Or maybe it’s because every time I see Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart together, I get mad the books were ruined and tween-ized. If that’s even a term.

My point is, and I swear I have a point, when I was doing dishes today, I watched the water fill a bottle and overflow and I immediately imagined it turning into a volcano and flooding the house with beautiful lava. That’s how my imagination is doing.

Muscle Memory

When I was about 5 years old, my family owned a house on the outskirts of a forrest. Whenever my grandmother would take me for walks, she would tell me about the world of the fairies and other magical creatures that lived in that forrest. When I’d run home to tell my mom everything I had learned, she would nod her head and add to whatever tale my grandma had started. I grew up in a very magical environment and to this day, I remember my mom’s smile when I found a leaf that had been written on and she told me, “It’s a note from the fairies.”

Imagination was so important when we were kids. Most of us were allowed to wear our superhero capes to dinner, explore worlds and kingdoms in our backyards and have real, complicated relationships with our favorite dolls. Children need imagination.

But as the days pass and our hearts fall victim to the way of the world as we know it, we lose the magic that laid the foundation for who we are today. I’m not just Chiara. One day, a long time ago, I was a guest of a fairy kingdom that existed in my back yard. This isn’t my first time being a mom because I once had a life-sized doll with unevenly chopped hair who I took care of remarkably well.

Because, like riding a bike, imagination is still inside me; it helped build me.

Why Do I talk about Imagination?

Because you need it. Right now. For absolutely everything you’re trying to achieve.

I’m writing a book that relies on my imagination to successfully unravel. You may be writing a blog post that requires you to think outside of the box. You may be taking part in our makeover series and needing your imagination as motivation to keep you going on the treadmill. Or perhaps it’s a job promotion you want, which in order to obtain will require your creativity to blossom.

Imagination doesn’t have to be about fairies, magical kingdoms and superhero capes.

It just needs you to step out of your day to day routine, turn off the news and ignore your bank statements long enough to imagine the impossible is possible.

So again, I ask, how’s your imagination doing?