I have 3 literary works that I am currently devoting energy to. First, obviously, is TCS. Second is my WIP, Children of Dusk. The third is a longer philosophical piece I finished and then shelved about 3 years ago called A Theory of Oneness. For years I'd wanted to put down on paper a sort of step-by-step explanation of my basic philosophy and how I defend it to myself, and I finally did so during the Spring and Summer of 2012. I had originally planned for it to be a multipart work, covering theory, implementation, and result of my ideas, but it stalled after the first part. My new plan was to dust it off, revise it, talk it up, and put it up on Amazon. So a couple of days ago I dug out that old green notebook (my first drafts are always longhand) and started reading.
Hoo boy.
I knew it was rough, but I didn't expect this; 50-odd pages of meanderings, tangents, and horribly overwrought (overwritten?) sentence structure. If it were all crap, that would be fine, I'd just junk it, sigh, and move on, but there are some gems in there, and the process of writing it was very important to me. Putting one's life ideas down on paper is very cathartic, because it forces you to stare unblinking at your own inconsistencies and contradictions. Writing Theory of Oneness really made me formalize, codify, and justify my ideas.
But holy hell, this is going to be a lot of work.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Friday, January 9, 2015
Genesis of a Snowflake Part 2
So there TCS sat for about 4 years, simmering away in my subconscious, not completely forgotten but not even vaguely on my radar until a birthday present brought it back with a vengeance.
For 2 1/2 years I had an 80+ mile daily commute, a long, lonely, and incredibly boring drone up and back Interstate 80 five times a week (and don't get me started on the gas costs). My lovely wife knew this, so for my 35th birthday she bought me a nice stereo for my car and paid to have it professionally installed. One of the neat features of this stereo was its ability to play burnt MP3 CD-ROMs. Not a fabulous feature in this day of iPods and smart phones, but one that appealed to me because of a quirk of an old job of mine. I once worked in the Interlibrary Loan department of one of the biggest libraries in the Chicago area, and nearly every new CD that the library added to their collection went through my hands (this was around 2003, back when CDs were still a thing). So I would snag any CD that held any appeal for me, bring it home, rip it onto my computer, and then bring it back and send it on its merry way. Over time I accumulated a massive library of music, far more than any early-2000s computer could hold, so I started archiving them onto disc. Now you understand the appeal of a car stereo that could read MP3 discs.
During my digital excavations, I came across some audiobooks I had copied during my library tenure, so I started working through those as a change of pace. Lo and behold, I find audio versions of Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations With God books. I'd read the books themselves once, and found them interesting but, at the time, a bit esoteric for my tastes. I decided to give them another shot and fell in love. Part of this was because in the intervening 7 years or so my personal philosophy had matured considerably, part was because the production was excellent. Walsch himself reads his own parts with Ed Asner and Ellen Burstyn alternately taking the voice of God, Asner's gravel contrasting wonderfully with Burstyn's mellow contralto. I can't recommend them enough.
In any case, I dove wholeheartedly into the series, and what did I find about 2/3rds of the way through Book 1 but my old friend, the snowflake-as-soul metaphor. All of a sudden, TCS came soaring out of the back burner of my mind with a big old DONE on it, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck like a lion attacking a gazelle, and informed me in no uncertain terms that I would begin writing it. NOW.
Never before and never since has an idea consumed me the way TCS did. My lovely wife told me after the fact that I was impossible to live with during the writing process because I was utterly and completely somewhere else. I knocked the first draft out in 9 days, and over that time I did nothing but write, think about writing, and (no joke) dream about writing. I suppose I worked, cooked meals, functioned as a human being, but all I remember of that week and a half is an unprecedented obsession, a complete mania.
I believe with all my heart that creativity is not a process of bringing something new into the world, but a process of bringing something through from a higher plane of consciousness. In my moments of clearest and best creative power, I feel like nothing so much as a conduit, a pipeline, a scribe taking dictation. From what? I could conjecture, I suppose, but anything I could call it would be just a label. The Muse, God, the Great Creator, an angel sitting on my shoulder and whispering in my ear (or in the case of TCS, screaming it's little feathered head off), it doesn't matter. All I know is that my creativity comes through me, not from me. I am, to quote Paul, not the Potter, nor the Potter's wheel, but the Potter's clay. Sexist bastard with an ego to crush a mountain, but he had his moments. :-P
TCS, in its form found on Amazon, is 97% exactly as it came through me in those frantic 9 days in March of 2010. I made a few grammatical adjustments, tweaked a word here or there, but all they were was polish on a few facets of the gem. I go back once or twice a year to reread TCS, just to reassure myself that I am not delusional, I am not a raving egotist, that it really is as good as I remember it being, as I remember it becoming. Each time, I am filled with awe and gratitude that I was capable of bringing it into being as well as I did. I am not proud of TCS. I am humbled by it.
JCS
For 2 1/2 years I had an 80+ mile daily commute, a long, lonely, and incredibly boring drone up and back Interstate 80 five times a week (and don't get me started on the gas costs). My lovely wife knew this, so for my 35th birthday she bought me a nice stereo for my car and paid to have it professionally installed. One of the neat features of this stereo was its ability to play burnt MP3 CD-ROMs. Not a fabulous feature in this day of iPods and smart phones, but one that appealed to me because of a quirk of an old job of mine. I once worked in the Interlibrary Loan department of one of the biggest libraries in the Chicago area, and nearly every new CD that the library added to their collection went through my hands (this was around 2003, back when CDs were still a thing). So I would snag any CD that held any appeal for me, bring it home, rip it onto my computer, and then bring it back and send it on its merry way. Over time I accumulated a massive library of music, far more than any early-2000s computer could hold, so I started archiving them onto disc. Now you understand the appeal of a car stereo that could read MP3 discs.
During my digital excavations, I came across some audiobooks I had copied during my library tenure, so I started working through those as a change of pace. Lo and behold, I find audio versions of Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations With God books. I'd read the books themselves once, and found them interesting but, at the time, a bit esoteric for my tastes. I decided to give them another shot and fell in love. Part of this was because in the intervening 7 years or so my personal philosophy had matured considerably, part was because the production was excellent. Walsch himself reads his own parts with Ed Asner and Ellen Burstyn alternately taking the voice of God, Asner's gravel contrasting wonderfully with Burstyn's mellow contralto. I can't recommend them enough.
In any case, I dove wholeheartedly into the series, and what did I find about 2/3rds of the way through Book 1 but my old friend, the snowflake-as-soul metaphor. All of a sudden, TCS came soaring out of the back burner of my mind with a big old DONE on it, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck like a lion attacking a gazelle, and informed me in no uncertain terms that I would begin writing it. NOW.
Never before and never since has an idea consumed me the way TCS did. My lovely wife told me after the fact that I was impossible to live with during the writing process because I was utterly and completely somewhere else. I knocked the first draft out in 9 days, and over that time I did nothing but write, think about writing, and (no joke) dream about writing. I suppose I worked, cooked meals, functioned as a human being, but all I remember of that week and a half is an unprecedented obsession, a complete mania.
I believe with all my heart that creativity is not a process of bringing something new into the world, but a process of bringing something through from a higher plane of consciousness. In my moments of clearest and best creative power, I feel like nothing so much as a conduit, a pipeline, a scribe taking dictation. From what? I could conjecture, I suppose, but anything I could call it would be just a label. The Muse, God, the Great Creator, an angel sitting on my shoulder and whispering in my ear (or in the case of TCS, screaming it's little feathered head off), it doesn't matter. All I know is that my creativity comes through me, not from me. I am, to quote Paul, not the Potter, nor the Potter's wheel, but the Potter's clay. Sexist bastard with an ego to crush a mountain, but he had his moments. :-P
TCS, in its form found on Amazon, is 97% exactly as it came through me in those frantic 9 days in March of 2010. I made a few grammatical adjustments, tweaked a word here or there, but all they were was polish on a few facets of the gem. I go back once or twice a year to reread TCS, just to reassure myself that I am not delusional, I am not a raving egotist, that it really is as good as I remember it being, as I remember it becoming. Each time, I am filled with awe and gratitude that I was capable of bringing it into being as well as I did. I am not proud of TCS. I am humbled by it.
JCS
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