MY MOST MATURE WORK?
Confessions of a Writer in the Midst of a Work
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© August 25, 2018
To those who may be interested:
For the past several weeks, I've been working on an essay, updated only slightly, that I'm massaging with the care seldom shown in my works before as I've always been in a hurry to get it out, in print, so as to move on to what is fomenting in my mind. I suppose that is because I started so late to be a full time writer (1990) although having written sporadically before including several published essays (early 1970s) and one book (Confident Selling, Prentice-Hall, 1971).
One of my colleagues at Honeywell accused me of using the company and its people as my laboratory, and being little interested in either the company or the people much beyond that. I was employed by Honeywell from 1980 - 1990, and although that comment was brutal, I suppose there is some truth to it.
Novelist and philosopher Charles D. Hayes, once wrote in one of his books, that I was an expert on organizational culture and behavior but never found an organization in which I was comfortable. Again, Charles had (and has) a point.
Recently, the Clinton County Historical Society (Clinton, Iowa) hosted a soiree for me in which I talked at some length on how I became a writer, suggesting that I knew it was my destiny as early as when I was a five-year-old because I have thrived in a climate of trauma; and have been more comfortable observing behavior than participating in it, although I was a four-sport athlete in grammar and high school which forced me out of that isolation.
I also confessed to that CCHS audience that it has taken me a lifetime to recognize, admit and accept that I am a natural introvert as Dr. Alfred Adler would define that inclination.
Yet, this is another confounding thing about labels. I was a successful chemical sales engineers with Nalco Chemical Company while going against the grain of what was then called "selling," developing my own approach which was essentially counterintuitive. I explained this approach, and why successful in my first book, Confident Selling (1971).
The book was accepted without preamble by Prentice-Hall (P-H) two weeks after receiving the manuscript, and in print for twenty years (1971-1991), selling over 100,000 copies.
Since I wrote it in six weeks, and sent it off unedited, I thought this writing business was a breeze. Nearly fifty years later, I can tell you it is hardly that. It is very hard work with rejection and discouragement part of the drill.
If writing is your call, and this I expressed to the CCHS audience, then al-oneness is not a punishment but an elixir. There is something to being alone and not needing the company of others for validation. It is a kind of joy being one's own best friend, looking for answers from empirical data in one's own life rather than from secondhand sources.
A crowd for me is three people, or someone else other than my Beautiful Betty.
Several years ago, a friend and former principle turned historian, (the late Gary Herrity), said to me, "Jim, do you know what your genre is?"
I smiled and said, "My genre?"
"Yes, how would you classify your output which is somewhat mind boggling."
"Life," I answered, "I'd say my genre is life."
Unsatisfied with this answer, he continued, "I don't believe that would be very satisfying to a publisher."
I smiled again, "You've noticed? They're not standing in line waiting for my output."
"Doesn't that bother you?"
"Doesn't that bother me?" I repeated. "Should it?"
Obviously, this ended the inquiry, and so we went on to other things.
When you hear from several sources, including your own family, that you are different, and it is treated as a pejorative, you feel more at home with dead authors who have experienced a similar conundrum, knowing that when you are gone, someone will gain encouragement from your going against the grain.
Someone wrote that I repeat many of the same insights and stories in several of my books. I asked him if he had a problem with that as novelist James Patterson writes 50 or 60 books telling the same story with different scenarios and characters and they are all national bestsellers.
He wrote back, "But they are entertainments! You write serious nonfiction."
My current project
Indeed. People will read my latest book, which is one of the shortest and will see in the end notes and bibliography of a lifetime of reading, but with little sense that this book has been gestating for many years in the back of my mind.
I wrote the book in 1999 in a rush with my good friend and archivist Canadian George Daly, keeping it in his files. Then I wrote it again in 2004 and went to a copy place and had it bound as my only copy. Then another Canadian friend, the academic and chemist, Henry van Eyken suggested I read Israeli scholar and historian Juval Noah Harari's two books, SAPIENS and HOMO DEUS, which I did.
About every tenth book I read makes me think. When that happens, I appreciate the writer's diligence and applaud his mastery. It was apparent I had covered many of the same themes as Harari in NEAR JOURNEY'S END if more modestly. His two polished and expensive editions totaled nearly 1,000 pages to my mere 200.
Clearly, the good professor is on the Information Age's bandwagon, and those who read me, know that I am not.
Professor Harari sees man or Homo sapiens on the way to extinction, and I see man in transition. He sees algorithms and data as the new religion, and I see God and the soul and the conventional religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam taking a respite from the hysteria in the catacombs of antediluvian times to regroup.
My little book should be out on Kindle in September written from an American's point of view, being critical of narcissistic America which fails to grow up or face the reality of the challenges of the "Internet of All Things," as Dr. Harari puts it.
If interested, stay tuned.
JRF
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