13.3.12

Thinking outside the box by having adventures with a box that isn't a box...

What is this? It's whatever the hell you want it to be, kids. As Led Zeppelin once said: "sometimes words have two meanings." Sometimes they have three or four meanings and, similarly, sometimes objects have more than one function. If they don't you can make it so that they do by altering your perspective and using the powers of your imagination. If you've ever seen a Jackie Chan film you'll know that commonplace objects can become deadly weapons, for example. Furthermore, a dustbin can become a gaping pit of malodorous doom where hopes and dreams die (the humble plastic receptacle turned melodramatic and macabre in the eyes and mind of the individual). A change of costume isn't just another set of clothing but something transformative that enables a personal metamorphosis. Look at the world differently and new worlds and conceptions of reality open up around you.

I'm trying to channel these sorts of ideas when I'm writing the picture books and it applies especially to today's manuscript, "This is Not a Cardboard Box". It's about a little boy, a little girl and a cardboard box though, for the purposes of playtime, the box becomes a whole array of more exciting things like a racecar, a witch's cauldron, a vampire's coffin and a space station. It's a fantastical illustrated celebration of the unlimited possibilities of imagination that urges flights of fancy and seeks to turn the mundane into something magical.

Today's writing, then, is a nice reminder that you perception is everything and that the only limit is your imagination. That doesn't sound very practical but screw practical rationality - I'm writing children's tales and trying to encourage open-minded outside-the-box thinking (paradoxically by writing about a cardboard box).

Onboxed minds, alternate perspectives and extraordinary adventures sounds good to me. Until tomorrow's typing - whatever that is - then, I think it's time I went and turned a cardboard box into a dirigible using the power of my mind and float over the Himalayas...

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