“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.” -- Robert A. Heinlein --
Since my Deep Brain Stimulation surgery in April and May of
2017, things have been quiet and sparse around here. Maybe there’s something to “The Myth of the
Suffering Artist.” I'll caveat that: in no way, shape, or
form do I consider myself an artist. I have and always will approach things as a technician, or maybe an engineer. Even when it comes to writing. At the age of 9, I was introduced to a
cognitive model called “Blooms Taxonomy.” It provided an interesting crystal ball for scrying into to cobwebs and haunted machinery in my head. (Is that you, Lord Sauron?) I’ll spare you the
boring and deviant details of my training and early adventures in metacognition, but I've come to realize where my mind does its best work: synthesis.
“Using old concepts to create new ideas; design and invention; composing; imagining; inferring; modifying; predicting; combining”
For me, writing is a problem-solving and design process. I throw a few concepts, quotes, and
references at a wall. I arrange,
rearrange, connect, fill, typo, misspell, despair, yell, accept, and
publish. But there's no art here. It lacks creativity and originality. For example, this is where I should insert a gratuitous (and overused) quote from Saint Norman:
...all good things - trout as well as eternal salvation - come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.
