“But, I nearly forgot you must close your eyes,

 otherwise…you won’t see anything.”

~The White Rabbit in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

When I was a child, I had the most extraordinary imagination. I created entire worlds in my mind and populated them with all kinds of interesting people.

Good, bad, evil, proud, strong, weak, defenseless, or defenders.

As I look back, I wish I had begun writing down my daydreams starting when I was around two. There were times I couldn’t wait to go to bed so I could continue the adventures with my imaginary friends.

But something strange happened when I entered the world of adults. I joined the police department, and literally, for twenty years, my imagination deserted me. I can honestly say I neither daydreamed nor remembered any dreams after I’d gone to bed. And the funny thing was, I wasn’t aware my friends had packed up and left.

About a year after I retired, a face popped into my mind. The young woman, who’d never before appeared in any of my worlds of make-believe, peeked around a corner as if asking whether it was safe to come out. When I mentally nodded, she stepped into the open, and a farm complete with packs of hounds and stables of horses blossomed around her. Other characters shyly followed her into my heretofore stagnant imagination as though unsure if I wanted to once again follow them around and report on their lives full of meaning and joy or, as in the case of the young woman, remembered pain.

Over the next two months, this young woman’s story poured out of me. I’d wake up in the middle of the night with entire chapters already written in my head. I had to immediately pull out my computer and write down what had happened in her world while I slept. At times, it felt as though another person was writing the story through me, and because that character dared to peek around the corner, the psychological suspense The Door at the Top of the Stairs was born.

I do have a point to all this. 😄

I’m telling you the story of my fully formed and then fully suppressed imagination as a cautionary tale. Never take your characters for granted, or they might leave, possibly for the next twenty years. Nurture them. Revel in their rich, passionate, sad, or difficult lives, but take the time to nurture them. Allow new ones to come and put old ones in their graves, but always cherish those moments when you can close your eyes and see.