AN INTERVIEW WITH MYSELF

by James Leonard Park

    I have been interviewed a few times
by people writing about various dimensions of my life.
But as it has often turned out,
these inteviewers were interested in radically different things
than what I think it is important.
So I have written my own questions---and my own answers.

    Anyone who reads these questions and answers
is welcome to ask about these themes
---or to introduce completely new questions.
I see no reason to say that this interview is ever closed.


QUESTION: WHY DO YOU WRITE?

ANSWER: I WRITE WHEN I AM INSPIRED.

    Ideas happen inside my head.
They can be stimulated by anything that comes to my attention.
And after a few days, months, or years,
I might eventually have put some new ideas together well enough
to put them down on paper.
Actually, since I got a computer,
I do almost all of my writing here.
But in years past, I would take out some scrap paper
and write down my thoughts.
Later some of these notes turned into essays and/or books.
I still have boxes of such notes on paper.

    Here is a piece of advice to others who might become writers:
Don't worry about the amount of paper you use.
Start each new thought on a new sheet of paper.
Put a one-line description at the top of the sheet,
either before you begin writing
or after that line of thought has been poured out.
Then you can more easily rearrange your thoughts
when it comes times to put them into an organized piece of writing.
If you use scrap paper,
such as paper that has already been used on one side,
you will not worry about using up too much.
Just let the pile of paper grow as you have more thoughts.

    For writers who use electronic memory,
this advice takes the form of always putting a good heading
on what you have written
after you are finished with the writing that is going to emerge from that sitting.

    I do not have any discipline of writing,
such as putting in a certain amount of time each day.
When ideas are happening in my head,
I write them out until I get tired of the process.
For example, I do not know how much I will write
of this interview with myself.
I will just keep going until these themes come to their natural conclusion.

QUESTION: HOW DO YOU REVISE?

ANSWER: I SPEND MUCH MORE TIME REVISING THAN WRITING.

    Later I will return to what I have written
and make it better.
Often I review a first draft immediately after I have completed it.
I always see things to improve.

    Then, later in the day, as I remember what I wrote earlier,
I think of new ideas that should be inserted here and there.
New lines of thought emerge,
which I can insert in the most appropriate places. 

    When I look back on some of the larger books I have created,
it would seem an impossible process to start all over again.
But large books are made up of smaller chapters.
I can write each section of a chapter at a single sitting.
That is all that needs to be done at the time.
Later the sections are fitted together to form the chapters.

    The process of revision usually means making the original much shorter.
I have included unncessary words in every paragraph.

    Also, the style of production I have always used
helps me to shorten each piece of writing.
I have a practice of always using all of every printed page.
(You will find only one exception to this rule in over 1,000 printed pages.)
Usually this means that the process of revising
means reading each line carefully to decide which line or lines on this page
carries the least meaning and therefore can be dropped
or combined with another line.
When writing for publication,
I compress the most important ideas into a whole number of pages.

QUESTION: PLEASE EXPLAIN YOUR LINE-DIVISIONS.

ANSWER: I START EACH NEW SENTENCE AT THE LEFT.

    Readers will already have discovered that I always use meaningful line-divisions.
Every sentence begins at the left.
(There are probable less than 100 sentences in 1000 pages
that begin in the middle of the printed line.)
Sentences are divided where we would naturally pause in reading aloud.
Human writing is derived from human speech.
So, just as we naturally pause at the end of a spoken sentence,
so I press the return key on this keyboard
in order to begin writing the next line.

    Sometimes I will revise these line-divisions later.
But that is always with an eye to making my thoughts easier
for the reader to read and comprehend.

    My Internet publications also follow this same pattern.
Here on the Internet, we do not need to worry about using up too much space.
Each piece of writing can go on indefinitely.
And I do not need to squeeze out less necessary lines
in order to make the text fit the number of pages available.

QUESTION: DO PAGE NUMBERS CHANGE FOR NEW EDITIONS?

ANSWER: NO, I COMPRESS REVISIONS INTO THE SAME NUMER OF PAGES.

    Some of my books have gone into additional editions.
I have followed the practice of always keeping
the same number of pages for each chapter.
And usually the same ideas will appear on the same-numbered page.
This is another discipline that requires me
to drop extra words and less-meaningful ideas.

    Once when I could not follow this discipline,
I allowed myself to write a whole new book
when the chapter size was not enough to contain all my thoughts.
This was the 24-page chapter on sex in my book on love.
The book-length version of these ideas was about 175 pages.

{Here ends the writing of the first sitting.}

QUESTION: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOUR IDEAS CHANGE RADICALLY OVER THE YEARS?

ANSWER: I THINK OF MYSELF AS A SERIES OF DIFFERENT WRITERS IN THE SAME BODY.

    I have now been writing and publishing for over 40 years. 
And it should not come as a surprise to anyone who thinks about it
that I should have changes of mind during this time.

    Usually the shifts of thought are small,
since all of my works were produced during my adult years.
Thus, the later editions of most of my books
do not differ much from the first editions.

    But sometimes quite meaningful changes do occur over a period of several years.
In those cases, I just decide not to create new editions of older works.
The older works will just stand as they were most recently revised.
I have moved on as a thinker, taking up new lines of thinking
and producing new books that could not have been imagined
by the person I was when I created the first works.

    Soren Kierekgaard is one of the writers I most admire.
He lived from 1813 to 1855, which means that he died at age 42.
If he had lived to age 84, he would have lived twice as long.
And his productive life would have been three of four times as long.
What would he have thought of his earlier works
if he had lived a few decades longer and had been able to re-read them?
I have no idea what he would have produced next.
But perhaps he would have moved into some completely new areas of thought.
Maybe he would have disowned some of his early work.
We just have no way to know what would have happened next.

    The same seems true of me,
except that I expect to live much longer than Kierkegaard.
And my productive live is already twice as long as his.
My religious views have probably changed the most radically over the years.
I do not reject what I wrote earlier,
but if I were to address the same issues now,
I know that I would express the ideas in much different terms.

    But the earlier expressions might speak to some readers
even if I myself would no longer say them the same ways.
So I can think of them as the thoughts of an earlier writer in my body.
I have now moved on to other ways of thinking.
And those who want to know my thought at the end of my life
should consult the latest editions of my works.
When I revise for publication,
I do bring the works up to where my mind is at the time of revision.

    And some early works would have to be so radically revised
to be re-published that I just do not revise them.
I go on to writing additional books,
which might deal with the same questions from a radically different point of view.
This is the sense in which I might say that I have become a different writer
living in the same body.
I definitely have benefited from the thinking that was previously my own,
but from my own perspective, the most recent expression is the most valid.

    However, readers might come to different conclusions:
Anyone who has occasion to look at books from different writers in my body
might ultimately say that they prefer the earlier James Park.

    Another philosopher has just appeared in my head: Martin Heidegger.
When dealing with is work, interpreters often distinguish
the early Heidegger from the later Heidegger.
And I myself prefer the earlier Heidegger.

    I wonder if that will ever happen for me.
Because I write about so many diffrent things,
I expect that readers will just find that they prefer one subject area over others.
Readers should read whatever interests them
at that particular time in their own lives.
In other phases of their own development,
they might find other books by me to be very interesting.

{Here ends the writing of the second sitting.}



Created 3-29-2008; Revised 12-4-2008; 3-19-2010
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