Progress of a sort

When I first presented Lichtenbergianism at that seminar at the Governor's Honors Program in 2013, I created a KeyNote presentation which became the inspiration — and the structure — for the book. 

Now, as I launch my career as a public speaker (hire me), I tweak the "deck," as we professional speakers call a PowerPoint, to match the audience/length of session, and since this week's gig in Minneapolis is upon us I spent the weekend going through it.  This will be the first time I've given the full spiel since the book was published, and I found I had some SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATIONS to make.

To be clear, there were no radical changes but there were several Precepts which I had clarified during the writing process and I had to rework those slides to accommodate the clearer picture.

RITUAL had changed the most: my first thoughts on the topic used the structure of the Hero's Journey to explain the concept, but about the third rewrite of the chapter I switched to a more explicit outline: Invocation/Drawing the Circle/Taking the Path/Numen/Breaking the Circle/Benediction.  Still pretty hippie-woo, but I think it explains the concept better.

The other two Precepts that I had to update were AUDIENCE and ABANDONMENT, and with both of those it was simply a matter of including the three options for each.  For AUDIENCE especially it was a change for the better; whereas before it was simply a lame "you should have an audience in mind," now it includes the concepts of The Crowd and the scenius.  It's amazing what writing a big thick book can do for your clarity of thinking.

The point is that your creative work will change from beginning to end, and sometimes even after what you thought was the end. (That's one reason that TASK AVOIDANCE is our first Precept: give yourself time to make changes.) Be alert to your work, and be open to corrections.