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