An excellent interview was done on the blog EvaWrites.com regarding a writer who spent quite a bit of time writing for cartoons. Check it out!
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Friday morning I participated with a career day program at H.I. Holland Elementary School @ Lisbon in Dallas, Texas. I was assigned to three different 4th grade classes who all rotated and changed every 45 minutes.
With two out of the three groups, I had a chance to take them through an exercise where the kids were all pretending to be a group of writers working for a TV station.
The rules were that they were to choose a time, place and characters.
With this story here, they chose 1776. The place was Lego City. Characters included people like Darth Vader (Star Wars), Barack Obama (44th President of the U.S.) and Finn the Human (Adventure Time). The constitution is about to be signed but Darth Vader comes in and attacks the president. The president wins the fight with the help of Finn and Skywalker. All the good guys decide to create a new kind of constitution called the DOII (Declaration of Intergalactic Independence).
The second class picked the year to be 5600. The place was Gravity Falls, Oregon. The characters included people like Dipper & Mabel (Gravity Falls), George Jetson (The Jetsons), Jessie (Disney Channel series, “Jessie.”) and Johnny Test (a Cartoon Network / WB Series).
These guys and girls have an incredible imagination!!!!
I had a chance to talk with 4th graders about where I came from and about my times of struggle and success in school. They listened intently when I told them about my time in Special Ed for reading, writing, math and speech. I encouraged them to keep learning, keep going forward and never give up.
I also had a chance to give away a few copies of my book, “It Could Happen!” I would do it ALL over again!
Yesterday, I actually wrote a few notes to myself!
I had too…I wasn’t necessarily dealing with personal and internal issues in the most fair way.
“You can’t just keep over-analyzing you’re parents. It’s time to take responsibility and take control of your own life…to be a man.”
“Stop trying to put yourself into a position where you must complete everything in one day.”
“If you take life seriously serious, then go work out…exercise, for the sake of Faith, Family and Future.”
We should write notes to ourselves.
We should write like we are from the outside looking in.
We should tell ourselves the things that are too hard to even speak out loud.
We then should read it aloud to ourselves….we must have the guts to tell ourselves:
“Dear Self: you’re acting like a kid, grow up!”
“Dear Self: you’re being a jerk, get over yourself!”
“Dear Self: you know you’re really just scared. Just admit it and stop faking it!”
Keys to Writing and Dreaming, Cartoon Daily News by Kendall Lyons (c) 2013
About a week ago, I told my 17 year old cousin to write his dreams down…with hopes that he DOES in fact write.
I know he can text…but, even if he needs to type, awesome!
Writing down my dreams was the smartest thing I ever did. It moved me from just “saying” I’m going to do something to actually “doing” something.
If you actually have it written down, removed from mind to paper and keep that bad boy in front of you, you’re likely to accomplish your goals.
Even now, I’m cooking some things in the back kitchen of Cartoon Daily News and I believe that by writing my ingredients down, my instructions given me on how to cook such a dish, then I’ll be able to bring you guys the best kind of digital meal you guys ever ingested.
So, what’s the point….WRITE IT DOWN!!!
Keep dreaming, keep writing and then make it happen!
