Maximizing sparks

Saturday, January 22, 2022

5 a.m. So, shall we resume? Let’s talk about how to put this material out to a wider audience, both conceptually and practically.

That’s fine with us. Your initial brainstorming about the topics as spokes on a wheel was good work, and between the two of you, you have begun dissecting it. Your secondary thought, that each topic might be a booklet, is equally good work, because you will want to be moving beyond the concept of books. For this you have others who can contribute ideas. But the initial work that must precede anything has begun, finally, and we are delighted.

And relieved?

Let’s stick to delighted. Relieved will come if you finish, rather than only begin.

Jane and I realized at some point, we need a theme to organize around, like “So You Think Your L:ife Was Wasted.” Life More Abundantly, perhaps.

Let’s look at the problem from the question of what people need, how they could use it; “Think of your reader,” to coin a phrase.

Nobody else will get that but me. Okay, let’s think of our reader.

What do you want, hope for, expect, when you find a book that promises to interest you? It could be many things:

• Don’t underestimate this. Think how much you have gotten from your reading of light and serious fiction, over the years. Mysteries, classics, and everything in between. Some taught you about everyday life, some about the strange world other authors inhabited, some about themes. Dion Fortune should remind you that novels can tell truths that non-fiction may struggle to make clear. And of course there is your favorite author, “he who shall not be named,” (lest he intrude and take over).
• Information, which may be subdivided into
  1. Additions to your knowledge of a specific field, be it history or esoteric lore or religion or psychology, etc.
  2. Introduction to a new field of inquiry, such as the bicameral mind book, or chaos theory, economics, etc.
• Ill-defined but definite quests: personal growth; refinement of the ore; movement into new territory. Thus, fiction or non-fiction, scripture, poetry, speculative fiction – many potential streams to feed the river

But what feeds you may not feed everybody or any particular anybody. So how can you “consider your reader” if you don’t know who or what your reader may be?

I rely on you for that, I suppose. Plus, what can I do but write what interests me, on the assumption that I am writing for those (whoever they may be) who are interested in the same things? If they aren’t interested in what interests me, why should they look? What could they get? Well, I suppose if they weren’t yet interested, but were being steered by their higher self, their larger being, they might stumble upon them, but it amounts to the same thing: Why should I (or anybody) write about anything else but what interest me?

In other words, you are imagining your readers to be you.

Hmm, I see your point. Nobody is going to be the same combination as the author they read. So how does that work in practice?

The more aware an author is of the elements in his own composition, and the more aware of the elements in his writing, the more chance of communicating what is important to him.

By paring away the inessential, you mean?

That is a side-effect, but let’s look at it a little closer.

One of those particularly interesting moments when I have no idea what you are about to say, combined with a strong sense that you have something ready to go. Always a curious feeling.

If you were to dissect your message – our message, together – how would you go about it other than you have already begun to do? By identifying themes in the absence of considering your reader specifically, you see what we have set forth. It is the next step that always gives you pause: how to take it as a whole and boil it down to a digestible lump.

Lump?

Any piece of information will be a lump until it becomes part of the person’s being, which is done by living with it. Every new life begins by swallowing a lump, you might say, and living as the lump is transformed into your body, and as your body transforms the lump. It is a mutual process: No two people ever read the same material, because who and what the reader is, is part of the equation.

So there’s no imagining the reader anyway.

We smile at your stubborn inability to move, on this. You don’t yet realize that your self-contained existence is both crucible that allows the material to be forged, and also barrier to dissemination.

Meaning if I were not so much living in my own world, I’d be a better salesman but might not have anything to sell.

We progress from smiling to laughing, but you might put it that way. So if you need to move from receiving to disseminating, what must you do?

Find people who live more in the world and get their help. I’m way too old to reshape myself in the way you’re hinting at.

We are tempted to say, “Nonsense.” Change is not a matter of anno domini, but of choice. You know this, in other contexts, because you continue to change, and to encourage others to change. Fear of change, inability to change, has never been your problem. It is a matter of laying down certain familiar threads and picking up others. You know this. Live it.

As an example: Dissecting the material for themes is something many people might do, and of course, the more the merrier, for every person has something slightly different to contribute, out of his or her own individual reception of the material. So to this extent, yes, encourage others to offer their thought without their worrying about the value of their own insights. Thoughts that may seem quite commonplace and even valueless to one may be extraordinary and useful to another who is living a very different mental life; that is, is living in a very different world.

But when all the suggestions have been gathered, it is still you, Frank, who will have to implement them. Others may do so as well, and if you do not do it, others may have to do it instead, but it will not be the same. No one else will be able to remember our intent even when it was badly expressed or even misinterpreted. Yes, the material will stand on its own, but your interpretation will make it easier for some.

They’ll change it anyway, in the process of digesting it.

That isn’t your concern. What you are thinking is a corruption of the original material is, in fact, the digestion of that material, the fitting it in with each person’s life. Don’t you think Colin Wilson could say that you mangled his message, in accepting some things, rejecting others, modifying still others? But he succeeded in striking sparks, and that’s all you or anyone can do or need do.

The light dawns, finally. (And I was right, you knew what you were aiming at.) Write in such a way as to maximize sparks.

Not so much as to be unnecessarily cryptic, but yes. Clear enough to be provocative, allusive enough to leave space between the words. That’s how Thoreau wrote, after all, and Emerson.

And Hemingway.

He who was not to be named. We smile. Yes, although fiction poses different boundaries for the possible.

Theme?

“Sparks”?

Perhaps. Our thanks as always.