Robin of the Woods

Just posted a short article under New Work which explains a new story I've written. I think you'll enjoy reading it.

Best.

John

There's different kinds of ways of looking for ideas.

1. You can sit down and close your ideas and hope something comes to you.

2. You can play different kinds of music.

3. You can read other stories and books to inspire you.

4. Sunsets are good.

5. A good night's sleep is great.

6. Dreams are an asset if you can remember them. I mostly do.

7. A vigorous discussion can stimulate ideas.

8. Anger at a policy or belief system that doesn't feel right can jar a few things loose.

9. Feeling loved is always good for a few jolts.

Myself, I usually go through most of the above, but for the most part my ideas come spontaeniously as I sit to write. I don't force them though, as that tends to be more intellectual and dry,
and most unpleasing to me. If I don't like what I write, I don't want to put it out there.

I don't personally believe that every writer will become known in their life, or maybe even at all. That's because there are many circumstances that can add or substract from a writer's popularity, despite poor writing or lack of publicity. Namely, it's just not their turn to be famous or known.

I happen to subscribe to the wheel of karma idea of things as Shakespeare hinted at in his own writings, being as he was a man of spiritual cloth in so many ways, as well as his friends.

That being said, it doesn't mean you can't just plain sabotage yourself, but even that is karmic. Patterns created perhaps by being put off by hard work, not wanting to pay attention to details, being lazy and so forth. But even those patterns subscribe to the Eastern thought of reincarnation and man repeating patterns of behavior over and over until he's learned his lessons in the school of life.

Just look at the world around us, and how the greatest nations of history and the present have fallen again and again and always because of the same patterns: exploitation of other countries and peoples, exploitation of its own people. Even of that sound familiar? It should. Great Britain fell prey to it. Rome fell pray to it. Greece. India. Japan. China. And now in current times America. Greed and avarice for power are the greatest reasons why nations fall.

Ideas are built from these histories all the time. We can call them group patterns, or karmas, collections of people who perpetrate or perpetuate karmic actions that bind and hurt others, as opposed to helping and uplifting.

And so again, we come to writing and its true purpose. Not just to entertain the masses and make its author filthy rich, but to uplift as well as entertain them. To help the souls affected by the writing to reach a further shore of self development and spiritual upliftment.

Enough said.

Back to writing. Got another karmic wheel to spin!

John

Ideas are like fish. If you cast your fly often enough times eventually you'll get a bite. I tend to catch a lot of them because I have created a habit of doing so. Even as a child I often sat for hours visualizing what I wanted to do, where I wanted to be, and what the world could be like if I did certain things or others did.

I read from time to time articles by successful entrepeneurs and artists and writers, as well as actors and politicians who spent many hours visualizing their goals and thus achieving them. It's not magic really. Though it can feel like that when doors suddenly swing wide that once were closed. But remember, even when a door opens you still have to be prepared for the journey that's going to happen on the other side. An artist who hasn't learned his craft may attract viewers of his artwork, but if he expects to make a living from it, he still has to deliver work that is of the appropriate level of craftsmanship that a paying audience would expect.

So all of the above being said and being true for most, then the logical thing to do would be to have lots of ideas, then to hone them to a state of polished craftsmanship. The ways in which people do so vary in as many ways as do snowflakes and grains of sand on the seashore. I had a friend at one time from India. Quite a good astrologer. He believed that all roads led to God. He called his belief system Ahimsa, which means "to do no harm."

So the idea was born for one author that if religion or spirituality could be a very powerful force of good, couldn't it also be one of evil or destruction? I just finished reading a great book by Mark Frost, "The Six Messiahs," which digs deeply into the ramifications of good and evil and how a man might start on the road to redemption and fall because of human frailties, such as self guilt and blame.

In this world people are not just good or evil, but usually shades in between. There are exceptions such as Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and so forth, but they are the rare soul, not the average. The average male or female struggles to create an identity for themselves an oftentimes spend the rest of their lives trying to understand how they could have gotten it all so wrong.

I recently joined a spiritual writer's club and find that the people in that organization fight as much over nuances of words and meaning as most people do, who don't claim to be spiritual. This is a good example of how sometimes the identities we create are flawed, not because they are necessarily bad or evil, but because they become inflexible. And we all know what happens to inflexible trees in a blasting wind. Snap!

As a story teller I'm not interested in punishing my characters for the way they think. It's not my stick. I don't think that way. I think anyone can be redeemed at some point in their evolution. Whether it's today, tomorrow or sometime in the distant future. It will happen.

And thus I am brought to the next phase of this brief article. I've got a great idea. I have a theme. Redemption. I now have a great villain. I need equally as strong a hero. Whether he's flawed or well rounded already, the villain has to be his match on many levels. When a person wins or loses it's not always by their skills alone, but as often times happens in our world, there are circumstances beyond our control. Weather, another person's intervention...or karma if you believe in reincarnation.

So now I've got all my ideas swishing together in the blender of my mind, tempered by my own emotional nature, and voila, what comes out is a story. Hopefully one that people will relate to. I only write about what I love. So if others don't love it, that's not a problem. Different strokes for different folks. Not everyone likes apples. Not everyone likes oranges, but...I laugh here...if I'm good enough, maybe I can get them to like an apple-orange.

Best to everyone.

The Author

Cartoon

I thought it might be interesting to dig into my concept of Cartoon a bit.

So many of us have a strong need to escape the world we live in. It's not the prettiest of worlds at times. And sometimes it can be darn hard to live in, let alone on, as the recent earthquake in Chili proves for those misfortunate enough to live on their coast.

The truth of life is that anything can happen. So the concept that perhaps there's a real world out there somewhere...a pocket universe, another galaxy, parallel universe, or alternate reality where cartoons really have individual existence was an idea I couldn't let go of.

Cartoons are used in the political arena on a daily basis as a weapon of humor and pathos, being as capable of uplifting a person as stripping them of their dignity.

What if our own sense of inadequacies also created a world or dimension where those ideals and inadequacies took root, and evolved and mutated into real beings of feeling and depth?

How would those Cartoon people view us? Would they like us? Would they fear us?

Hell, we even fear us. Look at all the armed people and nations around the planet, just waiting for something to trigger that fear into an action that is targetable.

So what if Cartoon existed? A beautiful young woman who saw the good in one teenage kid and wanted to nourish and help him, while at the same time saving her own world and maybe even our own as well? How would all those cards fall in the greater scheme of things...and especially when complicated by love and hope, and confusion...the territory of many teens in our present day world...past, present and future, I imagine.

So today we feature Cartoon on this page for the very reason that she exacts a hope and a primal desire to overcome our limitations and to become something greater and more positive than we are today.