A movie based on the most beloved children’s book opens this weekend. I remember reading Maurice Sendak’s book Where the Wilde Things Are.  I was taking a short break at work and saw this picture:

In an interview, Sendak was asked what he’d say to parents about the movie being too scary for kids.  His response?

“I would tell them to go to hell. That’s a question I will not tolerate.”

I love that.  Not that I want people to go to hell.  Nor do I believe in a hell, but one that we create for ourselves.  That’s a topic for another post.

I’m tired of parents, or people, telling an author, film maker, or storyteller what their story should or shouldn’t include.  First of all, it’s not those people’s story to tell.  Second of all, authors usually don’t know where their inspiration come from.  What they do know is they have to be loyal,honest, to the stories that are given to them.  Any conformity the author makes, outside of story structure, can destroy the story itself.

J.K. Rowling has been bombarded with upset parents and church groups for writing her Harry Potter novels.  Her books have been on many banned book lists.  A sign that an author has made it. Her response has been the same when questioned about her dark material.  She’s told them not to read her books.  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written by Mark Twain has been banned.  And that has been considered a great American novel.

If a parent, or anyone, who finds a movie, book, TV show, anything offensive, then ignore it.  Time is too precious to focus on what you don’t like.  Focus on what you do.

Even when a story comes to a writer, and it goes against traditional story structure, then the writer should go with their intuition.  Take the hit book to movie Slumdog Millionaire.  It uses flashbacks to tell most of the story.  I can’t tell you how many books, teachers, and professional writers state flashbacks are a big no no.  It simply takes the threat of death away.  But it worked.  It worked so well that tension was still a driving force in those flashbacks.  That’s because other’s died.  But still, it worked!

Follow your passions.  Follow your intuition.  Great thinkers and leaders do.

A couple of years ago I injured my shoulder.  I don’t know how but assumed it happened at the gym.  My rotator cuff hurt severely when I did any type of chest exercise.

It sucked.

I was used to benching a certain amount of weight, but had to cut it by more than 50%.  I can tell you my ego didn’t like it one bit.  I still wanted to workout and knew how to rehab my shoulder.  Within a couple of weeks, my ego agreed to the necessary decreased weight.  But with every gym session I added 2.5 pounds to my bench.  Eventually, I lost track of how much weight I benched and focused on keeping healthy, writing, working, etc.

Several months later, I noticed I was benching a lot more weight than I’d had in my life.  And I workout by myself.  I can’t find a training partner that has a similar schedule to mine.  This taught me something.

Small adjustments can add up.

Writing theEpisodeshasn’t yielded the audience I was expecting.  That was my first mistake, expecting.  But the audience has grown little by little, even though not all vote.  Despite my desire to bring fame and fortune to my book, I realized something.  My disappointment always vanished when I sat down to write.  My heartbreak wilted when I went to the gym.  My love for story, my love for writing, my love and gratitude for the imagination given to me is precious.

Every day I take steps toward my wants and desires.  Every day I do my best to release my expectations by doing the things I love, andexpressing myself honestly.Every day I go to my day job knowing that I’m providing for my ability to live my night job (job is totally the wrong word here).  Every day small adjustments will be made because small adjustments make a huge difference towardsuccess.

People will get an awesome idea and get right to work.  Then they realize one truth.  Anything worth having takes work.  It doesn’t have to be difficult.  Suddenly, after a few days effort, they stop or quit, stating the inspiration has left them.

What the hell?

There’s a saying. “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration.”  Thomas Edison.

To illustrate this, I’m going to paraphrase an example I’ve read by Michael Neill.  Google him.  He’s pretty damn cool.

I have a friend who works at Home Depot.  They have mountains of white paint in the paint department.  How ironic.  When a customer requests blue, for example, my friend places a few drops of blue in the white, and voila, you have blue paint. If the customer changes their minds and wants purple, a few drops of red and there you have it.  Purple.  The drops of colored paint is the inspiration, but the white base is the work.

In all arts, the inspiration is usually short lived.  But your passion and work carries it to fruition.  If people expect ever-flowing inspiration, then eventually the paint turns black.

When I was writing my novel, I had a big problem.  There are three basic types of fantasies.  A professional novelist pointed this out to me:

1.    Strange toad in a familiar garden.

a.     Witches, vampires, and werewolves in the real world.

2.     Familiar toad in a strange garden.

a.     Humans in middle earth, humans in space, humans at the center of the earth.

3.     Strange toad in a strange garden.

a.     Witches, vampires, or werewolves in space.

Mine is the third type. Which just happens to be the hardest because I have to world build the strange toad and the strange garden.  It wasn’t my choice.  It’s not like I sat down and said, “Wow. This sounds fun.  Let’s take the hardest freakin’ thing and jump.”

The story came to me.  And I ran with it.  Now came the hard part.  I needed tons of ideas to create this world.  So I sat down every day, wrote, and ideas came slowly at first.  Then within a few days I was flooded with them.  A lot of other artists has described similar experiences.  I had to buy a notebook or I’d forget them, which quickly filled with disjointednuggets of gold.

Did I use all of them?  Most.

The moral?

Follow through with your flashes of genius.  You’ll never know what will come.  If you need ideas to support your work, ask for them.  They’ll come.

Vampires in space.  Hmmm.

To rebel or not rebel.  That is the question.

The hero in my book is confronted with a choice.  His close friend and former mentor wants to brutally take over the world.  The hero is given the safe and easy position of being the right hand man.  Doing so would kill tens of thousands of lives through war.  Rebelling against his mentor would kill tens of thousands of lives through war.  Probably more.  Nice choice, huh?

I was watching a documentary called Slanted Screen. It chronicled the stereotypical and racial barriers Asian actors have to go through and endure in order to be successful in Hollywood.  I enjoyed the documentary, but I have a serious problem with it.  More on that later.

The main message was rebel.

One of the main reasons Asians are not seen as much in Hollywood is that acting, singing, dancing, the arts, are not considered practical choices of occupation.  I know.  My family detested my decision to study acting, and at times isn’t the most positive when it comes to my success in writing.

Actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa has been in tons of movies such as Mortal Kombat, Rising Sun with Sean Connery and  Wesley Snipes, and in upcoming movie Tekken.  The list is just huge.  He said something that I connect to.  If your heart is in the arts, and your family doesn’t support it, then don’t listen to your family.

Rebel.

I think too much in life we succumb to the norm.  Afraid of marching to our own drummer.  Wary of listening to our hearts let alone follow it.

I wrote a post about themillion dollar question. It asked, if you were guaranteed to make a million dollars a year, what would you do?  Does it match the work you’re doing now?  If not, can you spend an hour a day, five days a week on it?  If that’s too much time, then reduce it to 45 minutes a day, five days a week.  Or 30 minutes, five days a week.  Four days.  Three.  Just start.

What happens, if you truly love it, or like it, is you’ll naturally spend more time on it.  You’ll sacrifice precious things like hours talking shit in the bar, or watching television.  Have your own vision.  It happened to me.  I started writing around five hours a week.  Then it grew to ten.  Suddenly, I was spending an average of 15 hours a week writing.  I loved it.

We all have bills.  We have to eat.  Take care of our families.  Have laundry that we have to wash on the rocks by the river bed.  After we clothespin the laundry on the clothesline, what do we do?  We sit down on the couch and watch TV.  We watch reality TV.  Watch others chase, attack their dreams.  We see a lot of them succeed.  Then we go to bed, sleep, wake up the next morning, and start the circle all over again.

This is called complaining, playing the victim, blaming things outside of ourselves, when it is us who stopped us from chasing our dreams initially.  And that was the problem with Slanted Screen.  A lot of people interviewed said being Asian made it hard to succeed in Hollywood.  Really?

Have you heard of a small guy namedBruce Lee?

Rebel.

Living in a metropolitan area allows me to encounter tons of people.  In talking to them, almost every one I run into have a good idea.  Either they have a book they want to write, an invention that would revolutionize daily life, a hobby they’d like to explore, a business they want to start.  Just to list a few.

Question is how many of those people explore or pursue it?

I’d venture a guess that it’s 2% or less.

So what’s inspiration?  Is it the same as a good idea?

In talking to all these people, a lot of them also have inspirations.  They have a book they want to write, an invention that would revolutionize daily life, a hobby they’d like to explore, a business they want to start.

Again, I’d go on a limb and guess that less than 2% pursue or explore their inspirations.

When you walk into a store, like a Walmart, you’re surrounded by tons of merchandise.  Think about this.  Where did all that stuff come from?

A factory in China.

Ha!  Yes but no.  Go further back.  Where did any of those things–George Foreman Grill, flat screen TVs, gum, textiles–really come from?  Someone’s mind.  Think about it.  A long time ago someone who loved fish said, “I’d love to have live fish at my house, so I can look at them when I come home.”  Hence, fish tanks came to existence.

Any of you know how J.K. Rowling got the idea of Harry Potter?  She had a vision, an inspiration, of this boy.  She then spent the next several hours imagining the world of Harry Potter, spent the next five years writing it.

Look at all the movies that come out every year.  All of them started in someone’s head.  Sometimes it took several heads to come up with the story idea.  But it got made and released.

The difference between a good idea or an inspiration becoming real is action.  Go out and do it.

I’ve read a lot of books regarding success and personal growth.  There are three main things they focus on.  The way you think, the way you feel, and the way you act.

One of the biggest publishing successes for personal growth was The Secret.  I have a copy of it.  It’s main focus is thought.  Think it, dream it, and voila, it appears.

One  main thing it skims over is action.  The book refers to Jack Canfield.  It’s actually my favorite part of the book.  One of the things he did was write a check out for $100,000 dollars and every morning he looked at it.  Then he got an idea, an inspiration to write a book.  He sold the book for .25 cents each.  He followed the golden nuggets of inspiration, advertised in the National Inquirer, and sold close to 400,000 copies.  Not only did he basically reach his envisioned goal, he celebrated.  Then he got another idea to write something called Chicken Soup for the Soul.  It was a bit successful.  If you call a major hit a bit.

What’s the moral of the story?  Know where you are.  Know where you want to be.  Act on it.  Do something about it.  Just do it.  Sound familiar?  A small shoe company uses that slogan.

Years ago, my best friend and I were debating about what was more important.  Positive thought or Action thought.  What do you think?

You can wish to win the lottery, but until you buy a ticket, it’s unlikely you’re going to win.

Personally, positive thought is overrated.  Progressive thought, on the other hand, is awesome.  You want something?  Go for it.  Take the first step toward it.  Too many people want the success without putting the work behind it.  Think what you need to do to get what it is you want.

My friend coined the term progressive thought.  Thought that moves you toward your goal.  You want to be a great sprinter?  Sprint.  Want to be a great snowboarder?  Snowboard.  Want to write the great American novel?  Write.

And a small word on positive thinking.  It’s not about thinking positively, but ignoring the crap that doesn’t help you.  If a friend came up to you and said, “I wanna be an actor.”  Most people would be like, “Good luck, dude.  It’s like totally hard, man, and it’s so not practical.”  DON’T LISTEN TO THAT CRAP!  Let it roll off your back, have a progressive thought like, “I’m going to take acting classes.”  You are now one step closer toward your dream.  Isn’t that what Tom Hanks did?  Read his story.  It’s amazing.

Just do it.

My first post in Writer’s Journey talked about where I got the idea for my hero of my book.  He’s single handedly inspired me to create the world he lives in.

In my bio, I talk about recurrences that happen.  A lot of self-help teachers call these inspirations, nuggets of gold, moments of genius.  Over the twenty or so years, bits and pieces of ideas have come and gone, all pertaining to this particular story.   Then someone in my imagination said, “This would be cool for your story.”  I might need to seek some help.

I’ve mentally collected different nuggets of gold and stored them  in my noggin.  When I got serious and decided to write this book, I bought a tiny notebook and wrote down every single nugget of inspiration.  To my surprise, I’ve used most of them.  About a quarter of the ideas I threw out.  That’s fine.  Better to have more than you need.

When I read or hear other artists talk about where they get their ideas, a lot of them use this method of collecting, writing them down.  JK Rowling did this.  I saw a special on her where she would write on napkins, cards, anything that would take ink.  I think if I tried to write this story early on in my life, I may not have had the opportunity to gather the ideas that I need.

Get a notebook.  For me ideas come when I do the most mundane things.  I’ll be walking and all of a sudden, pop.  An idea.

A word of caution.  These ideas are fleeting.  There have been a number of times when I’m taking a shower, I get an idea, I take a moment to remember it, and poof.  It’s gone.  Take the time to write these golden nuggets down.  It’s these gold pieces of ideas that may change your writing, project, life.

Happy gathering.

I was around 14 or 15 years old. I had a good friend who drew well, and it seemed the pencil, pen, or paint brush did as he pleased. It was effortless for him. One day he drew a picture that I just couldn’t take my eyes off of. He gave me the picture of the creature, and I put a human face on it.

My hero for my first completed book was born.

I didn’t know it at the time. I was facinated by this person. I imagined a whole race of these creatures. I wondered who he was, the culture he lived in, the environment he’d made his life in, his profession, his character traits, etc. I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, take my mind off of him. I was obsessed.

I wanted to somehow make a story from this character. I wanted to express my inherent love and affection this creature that inspired me. But I was in junior high school. What did I know about anything?

Little did I know this person would follow me over the next 20 years to inspire the first book that I’ve completed. Little did I know I found something that would drive me to no end to get this out into the world.