Zanesville

Of Cognition, Revision, and the Internet…

“The emerging model of cognition is as a sustained act of imagination, and therefore continuously active participation in the consensual hallucination of reality.”

–Kris Saknussemm ( Write what you know–and be sorry) The Writer Magazine May 2010, author of the novels, Private Midnight and Zanesville

What if everything we experience in life is truly the occurrence of a dream, that our living is in essence, one small part of larger reality, the life and time of someone outside of us, or a person whose life surrounds, encompasses and holds that of ours?

What if the decisions we make, the actions we carry out are predetermined by those, past and present of this person?

What if we are but an aspect or one dimension of the terrain of the personality held by another?

What if the joy we experience in our dream is the nightmare some else is experiencing?

When does our madness become or stir another person’s joy?

Of Cognition, Revision, and the Internet… Read More »

Of Bootstraps, Climbing and The Eye…

“Every piece of writing is a bootstrap affair whereby you use the crisis of the next sentence to get to the one beyond.”

–Kris Saknussemm ( Write what you know–and be sorry) The Writer Magazine May 2010, author of the novels, Private Midnight and Zanesville

The word bootstrap usually conjures ideas of a man-child walking in the snow for miles on his way to school, alone and persevering against the elements.

How many times have we heard a parent or grandparent extol how the challenges he endured as a child made him the adult he presently is?

Many jokes center on the extrapolation of one’s difficulties that either did not exist to the degree described or simply sprang from tales spun to inspire awe and respect.

And yet writer, Kris Saknussemm aphorism touches on an all too apparent truth that many of us writers miss or choose to avoid.

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