Research, Cont.

Now I’m reading The Three Christs of Ypsilanti. It chronicles a study that was done on three schizophrenics in 1959 – right about the time I was born, as a matter of fact. All these of these men thought they were Jesus Christ. The purpose of the study is to see what these men do when they meet each other. The book unfolds over the course of twenty-five months. The researcher/author assembles his protagonists daily, at first with the intention of bringing about a collision of their “primitive beliefs,” in the hopes of shocking them into some kind of recognition of the truth. I’m about halfway through the book. The three men look forward to their meetings, but each is convinced that the other two are incorrect in their self-assessment. That is, contrary to their strongly held belief, they in fact are not Christ. Each thinks the other two men are deluded, in other words. (One of the men tells another one, “You are just an instrumental God.” That’s crazy talk.) It’s interesting to see these men deal with the cognitive dissonance they encounter through their meetings. Cognitive dissonance will feature in my novel, as the protagonist has his “world view” shaken.

I’m still alive!

I’m reminded how everyone takes their writing personally. Even people who really don’t deserve the tag “writer,” will take real offense if you criticize something they’ve put to paper. And the real writers? They’re no better. It’s a sort of righteous indignation. It’s a conscious choice, I think, to listen to someone criticize your writing and take it to heart. The critique group I’m part of, they will be brutally honest with people. We’ll see how I do when the time comes for me to read something to the group.

Here I Go

I’ve probably written 20,000 articles in my career. But this is my first blog post. Auspicious, I guess. I’m excited to see where this takes me. I plan on writing about my experiences writing my first novel. I’m pretty clear on the idea. It’s the execution that’s staring me in the face now. Once I get going, I should have a first draft in a matter of months. I think I can easily write 2,000 words a day.