The magic box

In 2007 I had a strange dream:

I was a child again in our old family home in the countryside. I was looking for a wooden box that had been hidden there. I didn’t know what was in it but I knew I had to find it. I needed to discover its secret – what was inside it?

I had a picture in my mind – the box was wooden, painted black and had some sort of pattern on it.

I searched the house all over but couldn’t find it.

The dream stayed with me for a long time but I never figured out what the relevance was.

Fast forward to 2008:

I am lying on the floor, crying. My life is going nowhere. I am stuck. Confused. I beg God to help me.

After an hour or so, I sit up, exhausted and dazed.

I look vacantly around the room and notice an old box under my bed. I pull it out and open it up.

It contains all my notes, poems, children’s book ideas and illustrations. Things I had pushed under my bed and out of my life a long time ago.

I gasp. The box is wooden…and black…and has a gold pattern stencilled on it.

2012:

I am writing again.

Whenever I have an idea – an unusual name for a character, or a random sentence or paragraph that appears out of nowhere – I scribble it down on a piece of paper.

Then I carefully place the paper in the magic box under my bed.