On Writing
 
 

On Thinking

This text is about the computer program "The Literary Machine" and also generally about my ideas on writing. The "Philosophical Investigations" of Ludwig Wittgenstein has influenced me, and maybe you will not be able to understand my points without having read that book.

Language and reality are basically different things and your language is only approximately the same as my language. In a way it is a mystery that children and most adults come to embrace the unenlightened view that words are exact and safe to use.

Views on  language really differ a great deal. Sometimes I am tempted to say about somebody: "He speaks like a book…"
Does that mean that he thinks like a book? Would that be harmful? Are words in books dead or alive?

A possible first point of view:

Different ways of conceiving truth and literature can mirror different intellectual life-styles. Some assume language to be the exact map of reality. Others perceive language as a deficient image or parallel line of events.

The first type of person is often very engaged and enthusiastic but he may also be rather upset when encountering the other type of person, that is the one interested in skepticism and the enlightenment that can be found in the looseness of word joints.
 
 

On Words

There are indeed many people who talk about the importance of language, but few do something about it. I myself have made the computer program "The Literary Machine". I think others should be more constructive as well.

Words do not carry knowledge; they are more like atoms. They give us structure.

Words are like tones or colors. Only by composing a special web with them do we get the magic. Such webs represent our real wealth; the words are levers for understanding in a context.

Words are not the neutral servants of theories; they are in fact the rubbed and integrated representatives of the theories themselves. Read more about this in my text: "Cosmology, Computers and Philosophical Thought"

Words represent and pinpoint knowledge of all kinds and on all levels. Flying around like flocks of birds in the sky, words offer us all the philosophy of life at our finger-tips, all the time. This is in a way the total philosophical induction. A summary of everything for everyone who wants to see.

Literary text with its words is that kind of outdoor flying. Literary writing means construction work, just like the composition of music or art. It may be word abounding and heavy with paradigm like science talk or it may be like a laconic verse.

Looking at the individual scene, words are transportable quanta units, corresponding to, but dissimilar to other phenomena within us, I mean the ones propelled by biological events, and instincts.

We ask ourselves what we are. Are we in the words or are we in the biology? Or in both?

Words in fact give us some controlling power in relation to the operating system of the individual. A good poem could bring up one or two chords from our biological depth. And change the balance  in doing so.

This is basic and important. Why should not word research be as exact and serious as chemistry with its molecules?

On the other hand we also understand that the space of unrevealed knowledge will be comfortably indefinite. Even if the philosopher's stone dropped into your hand, even if you got the most decisive revelation of truth from somewhere, you would still have to defend your thesis in the philosophy of science context. And after that, try to make it intelligible to the world.
 
 

On Subjectivity

Subjective can mean within system, within a self.

Or it may mean that we regret that a generalization is impossible. The subjectivity trap is our lack of knowledge about systems that contain several individuals.

There are indeed loose joints and ends when working with several individuals. But there are similar problems within each individual as well; for instance the conscious thought will not speak to the autonomous nervous system. The subconscious seems to run its own race. We try to exercise the control by physical training, meditation, etc.

Words are used for this also. Words are used in managing  your self, and they are used in contact with other individuals. And they are used for storage.
 
 

The capacity of our minds is certainly limited, we cannot deal with all things all the time. In fact we want to process things in an orderly manner and then dispose of them. Working with texts or literary projects also has this property. We do roll things out when they are ready. Or we roll things in when work begins and inspiration is in a build-up phase, consuming much of our attention.

Generally, our task is to explain how the soul can be built, divided, combined and transported.

As a writer you will sometimes be occupied with the task of giving birth to new concepts, of demonstrating them in a context. The work of creating a novel could have this element.

Alternatively you can work more like a collector, having the ability to pick up the vital and adequate words from the world around us. Words that get stuck in the dust filter of your mind. Or you find them walking along by the sea on the lonely beach of life.

Words in literature can have special powers. They may carry with them allusions to the vital, non-verbal parts of reality. Feelings, instincts or sex. This kind of cognition in the reader’s mind follows other lines than the straightforward logical reasoning.

Words brought together may be artful. There is an artistic joy in elaborating on words, just as the Egyptian hieroglyph writer had the option of adding artistic finish to the signs.

Words may also be combined in intriguing ways. A dissonance in meaning, an apparently illogic transition in the text flow may add extra value.

Reducing unnecessary emphasis and redundant words will often improve a text; you might feel the same sensations as the photographer when he sees a new picture emerge in the developing.

The idea of the nearly deaf  Beethoven still composing music appeals to me. That is the challenge to foresee the reaction in the mind of the reader. I once came up with the idea that connotations should be built in like guitar chords filling the text at intervals.
 

In a way, good work is like the work of the carpenter. The preliminary study, the drawing, the different tools and techniques. The finish and at the end and it will be apparent that some kind of spirit has been added to the dead material.

Good texts will both create new experience or new experiences. Texts can concentrate elements from the big flow. Such work can build original literature, persistent and impressive like the big paintings in the museums.
 

These are some of the ideas that I have about techniques:

• Create "movements" in the text that you think will be efficient in symbolizing the contents. Such movements could become some kind of "backbone metaphor" of a full text.
• Decide whether you describe structures or developments. (Se my text "Cosmology…" mentioned above).
• Find your own style in using the aesthetic "brush". Rhymes, alliteration, repetitions, homonyms, new words, etc.
• Think in terms of musical composition or some other discipline of art that inspires you.
• Remove metaphors and try to kill your darlings. Any common metaphor is your enemy. Any pre-1900 romantic metaphor is the plague itself. Be loyal to the age in which you live! Most writers are not for some inexplicable reason.
• Use randomization techniques sometimes. The similarity to modern abstract art could be rewarding. Crushing texts and their word bindings might make you see new qualities better.

The question could be made into a bigger one: How do I create life by "cybernetic action". How do I find the vital triggers? (Given that you believe that communication and intellectual design can have an impact, rather than always being the derivative of something else.)
 
 

The Literary Machine Data Base Program

I would say that LM texts and concepts are less than language because they simply reflect the concepts that only I myself have in mind. It is one step less than language also because it reflects my private interpretations of words, demonstrated close to my own examples or instances.

Words and texts in my LM database are thus my own hieroglyphs, my own myths.

LM also means outplacement. You can export your words to be planted in your own garden of thoughts. You could  be absent for ten years and then come back and taste them again. Or you could ship them from there to the language market.

LM also means memory. Life and memory are accumulation. Memory is an operator for language work, particularly for novel writing of course.
 

These were my general lines of interest in the program when I started with it a long time ago:

How to use the LM system is described in the Help file and you will also find valuable texts written by others at http://sommestad.com/lm.htm
 

I will here underline just a few things:

• It seems to me that the number of words building a concept should be 1,2 or 3; otherwise you will get a feeling of redundancy.
• The words building a concept typically define a logical "and " (an intersection). However, there is no need to be categorical about this. It could be "or" or dialectical opposites.
• Items are given concepts in a way that I would call "quick high level sentence analysis". The concept keywords are the vital nodes of the text. They will represent some kind of "efficient access line" that I associate with the association "thread" idea of Wittgenstein.
• My starting idea (in the mood of building things more formally) was that items should be seen as potential concepts, and that concepts in turn could be expected to condense into words. Lastly, the texts in themselves should represent processes. That model might work in parts, but I do not care very much about it at present.
• I once tried to use graphical box diagrams in an extended version of LM, but I found it inefficient and contra-productive. I sometimes get questions about order or "upside" of concepts or word lists. I think that there are no upsides for the same reasons, that there seem to be no presentation graphs in our brains. At least, that is my view.

• They create the "Wittgensteinian threads" through memories/instances
• They provisionally define the connotation, as the data base owner sees it.

Inspiration is indeed vital to writing. My idea of involving computer programs in creative work is rather to enforce the subconscious or inspirational dimension, not to remove it.

To write is to be creative. People who write all the time could be a nuisance, if this means that they as established writers block the way for others at the publishing houses.

That problem will disappear, in view of the fact that in a decade or two people will stop thinking that anything worth reading must be done on paper.

In intellectual life, the same knowledge and the same ideas appear again and again in slightly different versions. To reduce that kind of "noise" is important for all writers. That means giving due credit to the true originators of those ideas that tend to be reinvented again and again. That also means a true interest in finding new things to show others.

In this, language is the key, as is a good scientific critical mind.

True inventions and good quality do not spread easily. The general idea is that new ideas spread like a wind across the continents, thanks to mass media.

I do not think so; we are closer to a medieval walking speed. Everyone has to find his or her university, and it may not be the closest one.
 
 

The Web revolution

Writing is today a profession, a career. This is mainly a negative thing. And the economy of writing is still anchored in the Gutenberg technology. That will not work forever.

Be unconventional! Think differently. Turn your back on professional writing. Write the real books yourself.

An impossible thought for 99 % of the population? "Could I be a writer without real printing and reviews in the papers. Never!"

But give it a thought. The only thing that matters is quality and relevance. What do the people at the publishing houses know about that, really. They cannot be right about everything, always.

Publish on the net! It is not more radical or offensive than public libraries, where you also get everything free if you make a little effort.

Oh, you mean money!

Ok, but I think you will get your work printed one day, if there is money in it. There will be a secondary market for book-printing. It is probably not a bad thing to have proof of customer demand from net versions when setting up the contract.

Basically we are discussing the question of the natural size of circulation. With no printing machines involved, circulation could be 3, 17, 94, 567 or 13400. And size must not be a multiple of 16. And archives may be attached. That is the future.

Think about quality and fame, not always about money. Write for readers, not reviewers. Instill confidence among your readers by delivering quality.

Internet has the immediate publishing tempo of the newspaper in combination with the archive qualities of the book. And an astronomical cost advantage.

The only factor bigger than all that is the basic and normal human conservatism. A future is often most unwelcome.