A question?
It has now been suggested to me several times that I ought to commit the last 5 years worth of research and work to print, the idea has been growing on me exponentially over the last month or so; initially I was very resistant to the idea as I really wasn’t sure that I had the level of knowledge or experience to justify putting my work out to the general pagan/magical populace.
I suppose the final clincher was running the workshop the other weekend, there I was sat in a room telling people about my research, how I used the research to create ritual in which I could better gain a working relationship with the entity in question, how you could extrapolate other syncretic areas of folklore, mythology and the occult to create a tangible working system based around said entity, guiding them in pathworkings and leading them in a ritual based upon the materials I had given them to study.
And for the first time ever, I realised, I did actually have something worthwhile to give to others. A something that has, with a few notable exceptions been mostly neglected in the genre of popular occultism, in fact I can only think of two books in the entire marketplace that actually address this entity within a magical context, most of the extant texts are the result of a Phd thesis or other academically focussed work.
So here I am with an outline of what I want to cover and how, and I am pondering two questions and I am sure somebody on wordpress will have the answers if they read this. Firstly what is the average word-count required for a manuscript; I believe 50,000 is considered a novella - so would 100,000 be a good ball park figure? Secondly how far is too far when expounding personal inverifiable gnosis, can you put just about anything down as long as you make it VERY clear that what you are writing is gnosis and cannot neccessairly be backed up with cold hard fact?
Oh which leads me to thirdly, when writing a “magical” book what is a good balance between academic and practical; especially considering that there is a woefully inadequate amount of decent academic techniques employed in many magical/pagan pbulications?
Thanks in advance to anybody that see this and can perhaps give me some sage words of wisdom.
3 Responses to 'A question?'
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Dunno about wisdom - will opinion do?
If your work is predominantly based on gnosis, on experiential work, be frank about it. This is an exposition of your thoughts, your experience. As long as you can present it clearly and concisely, with examples, and a reasonable amount of well-thought-through argument, people should be satisfied.
As to length, I’d write what you have to say then stop. Aiming at a wordcount is something for the editing stage.
Another (unsolicited) thought - bibliography and references. Many books on topics such as these fall down because the author neglects to a) refer to their wider reading or b) doesn’t actually do any wider reading. This latter, I am sure, does not describe you!
Any reader will be concerned to follow both your personal train of thought and the volume of scholarship that backs it up; they want to read the books you’ve read, follow your thinking through. Do them a favour and lay a proper trail of crumbs, or half your message will be lost.
Thanks, lol the bibliography is in part already written as I insisted on handing out reading lists when I did both a talk and then subsequently a one day workshop on the subject.
I intend the subject to have a fairly strong academic bent, drawing heavily from the source texts (but in a readable reader accessible manner), but there are areas of my research that came about as a result of my practical work and what I would want to say would most likely fly in the face of current academic opinion. But it works as a praxis, without resorting to pick and mix playganism; which is all I really want to get across more than anything, syncretism, rather than eclectisim, if that makes sense.
Sounds great; I’d love to read it when it’s done!