Yesterday evening local author Rhonda Tibbs spoke at McKendree University about her novel Song of the Snowman, which I am currently teaching to my English 111 students, and writing in general.  Tibbs began her talk with an anecdote from her childhood.

As a young girl, Tibbs was fascinated with the clouds in the sky and asked her father for one of her own.  He not only gifted her with a cloud, but, more importantly, sparked her imagination.  Giving her a mason jar, he told his daughter inside was her cloud.  Tibbs explained she would see not only her cloud through the glass, but also rain falling from the clouds onto green pastures or dusty fields in need of quenching, other days a village full of people beneath this cloud.  The possibilities inside this jar were limitless.  Thus, the creative mind of a writer was conceived resulting in an author now at work on her sixth novel.  As a devoted fan of her work, many thanks to her father for realizing the importance of an imagination.

I don’t know about you, but I plan on finding a cloud of my own inside a handpicked mason jar and keeping it on top of my desk next to my laptop in the hope of discovering my own cloud with all its possibilities.

You can follow Rhonda Tibbs on Twitter at @ritbbs.