Dear Reviewer (and all new readers),
as you start reading en.light.en.ment, you’ll soon see how personal my book is; once I was to be murdered, then I nearly drowned and another time I was going broke.
en.light.en.ment is a ‘Living Book’; due to the nature of my writings my essays are developed on an ongoing basis … indeed, I read, correct & update my book daily. I say for good reason in my impressum:
“I work on them day & night; in fact, all but every minute of every day & every night.”
A key to my writings is my essay ALONE in which I talk about contemplation. People may ask, “where do you get all this stuff from? Well, this is what I do: I read, watch & listen … then think … then write.
As for thinking … all but every minute of every day & every night; thus my book is very topical and revised frequently. A revision may reflect a current affair … like the essay GUNS which had the 2017 Las Vegas shooting included. Some essays deal with popular sciences, i.e. FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE which are updated regularly too.
Furthermore, when I read the book “The Happiness Advantage” I promptly added a relevant paragraph at the bottom of my essay HAPPINESS.
You probably will agree that I have created a devilish problem for myself when I decided – for good or for bad – on that unusual format for my essays and the layout of my book.
Every page is hand-made in MS Word … no two pages are the same in layout and I refer to my at times somewhat odd language as German/Australian/English. Have a look at the footnote to page I …
“One of the key qualities that made me so believe in what
I was doing is that this was a book in which form was being
given equal billing with content … and that was no accident,
since GEB is in large part about how content is inseparable
from form … how semantics is of a piece with syntax.
“As though I had always known of myself that, in many
aspects of life, I was concerned as much with form as with
content – (remember, I used to be a photographer, CB).
“Thus, thanks to the ease of using TV-edit (Microsoft Word
for me, CB), whatever I wrote underwent polishing to make it
look better on the screen, and though such control would
at one time have been considered a luxury for an author,
I was very attached to it and loath to give it up.”
The above is by Douglas R. Hofstadter
author of Gödel, Escher, Bach
While this language and book-format are an expression of myself – how I function, how I work (in my life-long woking career I was a still life photographer, each photo is hand-made, with great attention to detail) – it does not so much restrict me … as force me to discipline myself.
dis·ci·pline
“Shined shoes save lives.” So said General Norm Schwarzkopf … “in the heat of battle, under pressure, the undisciplined die.”
I reckon so it is in the indie-book trade. Was my work not disciplined, my book would die … as would I.
As regards my frequent revisions, here is another reason: Since I limit myself to very short essays and especially since I design my pages with my words often surrounded by much white space, I confine myself to brevity … this often calls for repeated revisions.
I am in tune with these traits of Bertrand Russell’s: (from my essay RUSSELL)
Russell strove to rid philosophy of meaningless assertions;
he sought precision in argument by the use of exact language.
Russell saw logic and science as the tools of philosophy;
he believed one task of the philosopher is to remove confusion..
My paragraphs and sentences are constructed painstakingly, words are chosen carefully and since English is my second language, I use the dictionary & thesaurus extensively.
This is a labour-intensive undertaking; for instance, I just added two paragraphs at the bottom of ALONE … it took me two days to compose them (I’m a slow writer).
With the odd layout & language, editors find it hard to work with my text, hence I am (largely – but not only; thank you, Wendy) my own editor … when I asked my earlier editor to review my book, he said:
“This is such an interesting & idiosyncratic book, that I’m not sure it should be edited (really, proofread) at all, you write very well and it’d be a shame to lose any of your natural voice.”
… helped by my readers, who may point to obvious mistakes – maybe spelling or factual mistakes – but also conceptual inconsistencies.
I deem my book en.light.en.ment – as unusual as it is – a living thing, with heart and soul, and it will always be a work in progress, forever changing … still from my impressum:
“The book is not finished – it never will be, “an essay (a poem) is never finished, only abandoned” (Paul Valéry); “has anybody ever finished anything?” (Leonardo da Vinci).”
Furthermore, due to my book’s format, where the pages are fixed PDFs, I cannot publish it as an e-pub, which in turns means my book is not available on the major e-book channels. In fact, I sell only the printed book from my website.
Anyway, since my essays stand on their own, you don’t need to read my book from cover to cover … you can read pages randomly; open the book arbitrarily; see what you may find; be surprised.
You, dear reviewer, are now my new best friend … the most important person in my life. But make no bones about it, I haven’t written en.light.en.ment for you, not for my readers (as much as I cherish them); no, in the first place I write it for myself … to see my thoughts and feelings on a white page with black & grey ink, to clear my head.
The 2nd reason why I write is to help people’s understanding of our world and foster a sense of empathy and compassion … ultimately to make the world a better place, as per Krishnamurti: he believed the world needs a revolution. I agree. See my essay KRISHNAMURTI
Thank you