Is there a Point to Life?

I became interested in this question about a dozen years ago. During that time I spent hundreds of hours reading eastern philosophy, zen, Theravada Buddhism, meditation, and general philosophy books from the west.

Answers to, “What is the point of life?” – in my best estimation, come in two flavors.

1. What is the point of my own life – what am I living for, and what am I focused on here?

2. What is the existential point of life – why were we created, and what was the purpose of mankind’s creation? If we were created at all. This I don’t focus on in the book – but I’m teasing myself with the idea of creating this book too.

In 2007 I wrote a piece at Aim for Awesome entitled, “What is the Point of Life?” that has become the number one visited article on that site for the past year, and now has surpassed all other posts in popularity. There are 140+ comments and there’s amazing insight in the comments section. If you read the post you must read through at least some of the comments as well – just brilliant!

It’s an interesting topic and one I won’t tire of anytime soon. So I just began the book… “What is the Point of Life? ebook”

You can contribute to it if you like – anytime, there is no time limit since it’s an ebook on PDF format and I can easily edit it as I get a fresh batch of contributions from readers like you that want to add your couple sentences or even paragraph or page to it.

It will be a collection of ideas from all over the world about the point of life.

Go on – click the link just above and see how to add your opinion to the ebook. Publishing will be in April 2010, but as I said – no limit as to when you submit your contribution to it.

Cheers!

What’s Your Shit:Gold Ratio?

Advice to Writers recently had a post about Hemingway claiming to ‘try’ to throw away 90 pages of shit writing to 1 page of masterpiece. His shit:gold ratio is a claimed 90:1.

I was wondering what mine works out to. I think I must have something like 3:1 because in the course of rewrites and editing I must throw away 3 pages for every one decent. This includes not just whole pages or chapters, but all the words I trash in favor of better ones.

At 3:1 am I not critical enough of my writing? I figure when it goes through an editor there’s another 1 page thrown out per 1 that stays… so, maybe I’m at 4:1 after editing.

What is your shit:gold ratio – is it anything like 90:1?

Was Hemingway not just a brilliant writer, but a masterful bullshitter? I think I’d quit the profession after a 20 or 30:1 ratio! Was Hemingway like a monkey banging away on the typewriter keys? Can you imagine how much paper this guy wasted over the course of his lifetime? Holy shite…

Do you really think, while writing a 300 page book he threw away anywhere near the equivalent of 27,000 pages?

Come on now.

I’m calling BS.

Jesus Did I Edit “Cleansed”

That’s not a question. I edited the hell outta this book last night – flying through 45 pages in 2 hours.

Did you ever hear someone tell you that it’s best to write something and then go have a look at it later? I mean WAY later?

I wrote Cleansed in 2007. I shopped it around to some agents and directly to some publishers that OK with that contact. I got some responses – all of them – we don’t touch that subject.

The subject? Adults that like kids.

Nevermind that the entire book is written about perpetrating vigilante justice on this group. Nobody will touch it regardless.

So, it’s not a big problem – it was a disappointment at first as I realized that 124,000 words were just for my own enjoyment and learning experience. Well, not totally true – I have had some sales and I outright gave Cleansed away at one point. I had some great feedback – many readers enjoyed the hell out of it.

Anyway, so I opened it last night – thinking I’d just have a peek at it.

AUUUGH! I literally screamed out loud. By the 5th obvious error on at about the 2nd page I was horrified. I can’t believe I didn’t have someone seriously edit Cleansed before I sent it to agents. They must have been literally laughing at it! I’d have been too!

I learned a very valuable lesson last night, sure it was 2 years late – but at least I learned it! Not only do I have to read my work through 5-6 times looking for errors – like I did in 2007 with Cleansed. But, I must give it to at least one good editor to proof the first 3 chapters before I send it to anyone to read.

I brought the quality level up by a factor of 2 last night. I wonder what an editor could do…

Learn from my mistake. You need, you need, you need,  you need someone to proof your novel before sending to agents.

Write a Book with Speech to Text – EASY!

For those of you considering writing a book you’re probably dreading typing 40-100,000 words of text and destroying your hands. I know when I write a book I usually just sit and bang it out until I’ve got the draft finished. That might take a week or four weeks.

What if you could make it easy? What if you could just speak into a microphone and have it all converted to text for you – perfectly, with correct punctualization?

How helpful would that be for you?

Have these programs become any better since 2007? I’d LOVE to have a program take down all I said. I’d probably never shut up.

Anyone using Dragon Naturally Speaking? Carnegie Mellon University’s Speech Recognition S/W program? Something else? Did Windows 7 come out with something that works?

The Dragon system is expensive – the professional version is $900 USD. My nightmare is that it will be just marginally better than the Windows Vista the guy is using in the video.

I’d throw that shit – computer and all, right through a closed window and not even regret it. Things that don’t work after I paid for them and was told they work – get me all unibomber.