Thursday, December 20, 2012

Books

As neither the strongest nor the fiercest animals on the planet, our ability to share and pass on information that makes us smarter, quicker, is what has (in large part) paved our way to the top of the food chain. We have brains and opposable thumbs, we are adaptable, can communicate complex ideas, and work well in groups.

For many 1000s of years this communication was done orally, through story telling, theatre and song, alongside learning necessary physical skills directly from family and tribe.
Then, we discovered writing .....
For a long time, of course, reading and writing were the exclusive province of the highest echelons of society - the priests and kings - and access to this powerful medium and the knowledge it held was strictly guarded, through caste and taboo. Only after the invention of the printing press in relatively recent history, along with translations of texts into the vernacular, did it really become the province of the masses.

Now, in the day and age, through blogs, tweets, and almost universal access to media, we are all sharing our insights, our opinions, and our critiques to anyone who will listen ... and it has become a vast flatland of information, way too much for one person to ever assimilate.
On the one hand this is great, so many connections to knowledge and skills from around the globe, coupled with the ability to comment and refute, improve and disseminate ideas. On the other .... a morass of half truths, unsubstantiated rumor, and a vast amount of wasted breath.
It's a noisy world out there.

So, I have been working on a book, a tactical thinking book, based on dueling and deception. It's what I know, am interested in, and feel I have something to say about .... but I have come to realize I hate martial art books, and whichever way I try to present the knowledge, it turns into one of the books I hate. Not the cool historical stuff, or the cultural stuff, or the stories and myths of the characters that populate this world, the 'how to' books, with the awful descriptions and the bad still photography ......
Don't get me wrong, I truly believe there is worth in the written word, after all, those folks researching old Renaissance and Medieval fighting technique are able to read about them and see drawings from 500/600 years ago, because someone back then decided it was a good idea to preserve them in a book. Had he not done so, the knowledge could have been lost for good once firearms changed what fighting was, (and some say that would have been OK) but the knowledge survived because of books.

My question is really this - Are the books I dislike so much the best way to communicate ideas? After all this format has held it's ground for a long time now (Yes, yes, I know there is video too but they often irritate me too). Or is the reader actually unimportant ...... ? Should the writer just put down what they have in their heads with no thought for the reader and leave it at that? Or do they bear a responsibility to try to actually communicate in a way that someone else will understand?
The same question could be asked this way - Does an artist make art purely for themselves? Or does it only become 'Art' when someone else looks at it? (I mean, why write it down unless you want to share it ....?)

Over the centuries writers on martial practice developed many devices and voices to talk through, some purely catalogued techniques, others wrote poems or songs that retained only the important principles, others held conversations with Tengu (mountain demons) or debated over cigars and brandy at a country house. Some were more oblique than others - Musashi's "Practice this well until you understand" comes to mind for instance, others liked to break things down into practical detail, yet others got so complex that the instructions and diagrams became closer to an esoteric book of magic than a practical guide .... but which is most useful ...?
Is any of it useful at all ....?

The more I read, the more I have come to realize that probably everything has been thought and said before - it really has! What we think of as innovations and insights, someone probably already had, and the proof can pretty certainly be found in some old book, painting or story, if we care to look.

But ....... I am not talking myself out of the exercise altogether despite my dislike, because the other side of the coin is that much has also been forgotten, and that is why those that feel the compulsion to share really should do it, should give it their best shot and let their point of view out into the universe.
I'm not as yet sure what 'device' I myself will attempt to communicate through ... and it may still be misunderstood or misinterpreted, misquoted or just plain ignored, but who knows, one day in the far distant future, someone might even find it useful .... and if not useful ... at least a worthwhile diversion.



9 comments:

hessian1 said...

Maija,

If I'm understanding you it seems the type of books you hate are more of technique driven books. Have you ever considered couching the information in an actual story..this seems to be the best way to teach principles and concepts. Either create another world as in SF or fantasy , a historical novel, or something fictional involving a student learning.

This harkens back to the fable or parable and makes it more absorbing to the reader. If the story captures the reader it's amazing how much they will learn from a story.

No matter what, good luck

Jake said...

My father was fond of the expression "the perfect is the enemy of the good."

Whatever medium you choose will ultimately be unsatsifying. Choose one anyway :-)

(I sympathize, btw. I'm trying to write some stuff of my own, and getting the right format is a PITA)

Jake said...

And this is me following this thread...

FSD said...

Maija,

I've learned a good bit from both books and videos. And I have some books that I bought many years ago, looked at more recently, and learned from them yet again. I've also learned from your blog. So based on my personal experience alone I think instructional media can definitely be valuable.

You know that different people learn differently. Some people are good at learning from books, some videos, some both, and some neither. Some people learn more from seeing or reading about concepts, and others from specific technical examples. Whether someone learns from your material also depends on what stage they're at...what they're receptive to at the moment they "consume" it.

It's highly unlikely your work will be exactly like anything else out there. So I'm pretty confident that people will get unique and valuable knowledge from it. Different people may get different bits and pieces...and that's normal and ok.

I'm having pictures taken right now for two books I'm working on. I've gotten about 2,500 in the last week. Looking at them, they're not perfect. You have to "pose" for each picture, and the poses just don't look realistic. Also, in order to get the right angles and make techniques visible, sometimes you need more distance than is functional, etc. In the past I've captured images from video footage. Those captured images look more realistic, but they quality isn't good enough for a high quality book. So there is always a trade off, even within different methods for the same medium.

Video vs. pictures/text... I think both have advantages and disadvantages. If you can, I think people would learn most from a book and companion video.

You're going to write or film YOUR way...as result of your experience in training and teaching. I think the best bet is for you to imagine you're teaching when you're creating your book and/or video. You may teach different people in different ways...so you can think of a few different types of practitioners and write for each of them. You might start off with concepts and then move to technical examples, for example. You can also tell a story.

In any case, I'm sure whatever you decide, it's going to be great.

The Hackademician said...

Best practice for writing a book like the one you describe would be to find a few people whose opinions you trust and have them read and comment on everything you write. Pick people who fit the profile of the reader you want to reach with your book -- experienced practitioners, beginners, intermediates looking to make the jump -- along with one or two teachers who you think do a good job of explaining difficult concepts.

Writing is like sparring. You need other people to make it live. At least that's what I tell the students in my writing classes.

The Hackademician said...

Best practice for writing a book like the one you describe would be to find a few people whose opinions you trust and have them read and comment on everything you write. Pick people who fit the profile of the reader you want to reach with your book -- experienced practitioners, beginners, intermediates looking to make the jump -- along with one or two teachers who you think do a good job of explaining difficult concepts.

Writing is like sparring. You need other people to make it live. At least that's what I tell the students in my writing classes.

Maija said...

Thanks for all the cool suggestions and kind words.
I think it is mostly a battle with over thinking and losing the authenticity by getting that pesky brain editor involved too early.

It will come true I'm sure ... ahem .... :-)

Dragan Milojevic said...

People here have already said most of the things I'd have to add on the subject. However, I also believe that with people like you writing a book is not just a matter of egotistic need to call yourself a "published author"...there is the aspect of learning even more about the topic by writing abut it.

Same as with teaching something, trying to present some information in a new form will inevitably lead to looking at it from new perspectives, hence new understandings. When it comes to what comes out of it - maybe it;s best to only provide more or less precise guidelines, so the people who read it (and even more importantly, WORK from it) will come up with possibly/probably new expressions. Maybe looking like nothing you had in mind. Guess what, i my view it only makes it all the more worthwhile!

With regards to the technical format, the new technologies enable it to be a true electronic book, where videos are embedded in the text, so instead of having still pictures, you have video clips.

BTW, I love how you interwove all those references to Burton, Narvaez Pacheco and other unnamed authors :-)

Maija said...

Dragan - Thanks for your thoughts, and cool that you noticed the references :-)