Making stuff up

Where do ideas come from?

I’m in the final throes of making my children’s book about Divorce Granny, and I got some interesting feedback from the publisher: he thought some passages were too serious.

At first, I grumbled a bit. This is a book about divorce, that’s serious business!

But then I realized: this is the best feedback I could have gotten! It allows me to really let loose in the Nonsensical Department, and that’s where I feel right at home!

Sketches of Divorce Granny “resolving” a fight

Instead of having Divorce Granny hit the parents over the head with her umbrella (a questionable act in itself, since violence in kids’ book is heavily frowned upon these days), I am giving the umbrella a life of its own...

Meet:

the Talkiebrella!

(Prataplu in Dutch)

The Talkiebrella is the result of an experiment gone wrong: it was supposed to be a Singing Saw, but then this came out.

The Talkiebrella talks, but only one word at a time.

Then again, it’s usually a pretty long word:

Thinking this up was so much fun I made myself giggle! Although: did I think this up? It feels more like the idea presented itself.

Don’t worry, the necessary violence is preserved - it’s just funnier now!

There’s something really mysterious about the power of imagination.

More often than not it feels like I’m just grabbing something that was already floating around out there, and solidifying it.

In the case of existing things this might be explained by morphogenic fields (which may or may not exist, but whatever you think of them, it’s undeniable that there’s an interconnectedness underlying everything).

But nonsensical stuff? Stuff that’s just silly? Stuff that’s never been thought or seen before? Where does that come from?

This reminds me of a dream I had ten years ago and that I made this comic about:

I searched for it again but no: there’s still no Karbiti Spieron that I can find on the ever widening web! So where did that come from...?

Where do new ideas come from? Some quantum soup of ideas and impulses that we all float around in, full of potentialities that only collapse into reality once we turn our attention on them?

I have no answer.

But I do like the idea of quantum soup.

Granny crowdfunding at 59%

If you’re wondering how my campaign for the Divorce Granny book is doing - Scheidoma has entered its final week and is now at 59%.

So if you’re Dutch (the book is in Dutch) and could do with a nonsensical book on a serious topic, please consider buying it through my crowdfunding:

(or you can wait until it comes out in August; but the crowdfunding benefits me directly and earns me more than the standard 10% royalties)

(which I’d have to wait for at least a year, while the crowdfund money comes in this month)

(and I could really use it right now - a little “service” light sprang up on my car’s dashboard just the other day… Oh boy! What is it this time?!)

And now for something completely different

When I searched the Karbiti Spieron comic on my old Tumblr account, I also found this one below, from ten years ago:

I still stand by that.

More positivity!

More nonsense!!!

(of the good, goofy kind)