Oh, Marilla, how Much you miss."

Growing up, my mom always played Anne of Green Gables whenever it was showing on PBS. I always remembered p paticular part whre Anne asks Marilla, "don't you imagine things different from what they are?" And to Marilla's curtious, "no," Anne says dreamily, "Oh, Marilla, how much you miss." And that is when I fell in love with the idea of seeing things different than what they are, which is probably what inspired me to be a writer.

In later years, I begged Daddy to buy me the Anne of Green Gables book series. And to my delight, he did. And I thoroughly enjoyed them. I even learned how to spell "Chrysanthemum" correctly, and I imagined myself with red hair and a pretty nose, which was just as hard for me as it was for Anne to imagine her red hair away, because my biggest insecurity is my nose.

To this day I wonder how children with so much imagination could grow up and be serious adults with no imagination at all. As I've gotten older, I've matured, but my imagination has never left me. I like to say it's just moved to a different location. Instead of dramatic acting with my toys, my imagination plays in my writing. I create my world with lined paper and a pen. (Actually, I LOVE to write in pencil, but it smears A LOT!) And I can still imagine things different from what they are.