Writer's Update: It's Been A While

Greetings, it seems like ages since we said hello. As I write this, I've realised that this blog is approaching its 10th birthday. If it were a human, it would probably be wondering whether it was happy with its gender, and be convincing itself that to have any chance of reversing the impending planetary doom its parents must rally to get rid of that ghastly secretion called carbon. But I digress.

Thank you for joining me today, on what is post number 737 on the Philosophical Muser's journey in blogosphere. I think overall my blog has settled into a pretty good steady state. I'm averaging about 3,000 hits a month and I'm hardly producing anything new, for which I'm grateful. My blog-writing paucity has been largely down to the fact that I've been working on the final edits of two more books - which means I'm pleased to say that I have now finished the first drafts of four books from my list of books to do. It feels so good to have ticked the first four off:

A book about Christianity called The Genius of the Invisible God P

An epistolary of wisdom and general philosophies for life P

A book on morality P

A comprehensive book on economics P

A book about love

A book about Christianity called The Economics of being a Christian

A book called Marvin The Supercomputer, based on a massive thought experiment

A book on psychology and human behaviour

A book on fundamentalism ,cults and other dangerous in-group tribalisms

A couple (maybe three) of books of essays comprising the material that doesn't belong in any of the above

There are plenty of scraps that didn't make the books, and some of that will make good blogging material, so you might see a rise in new material published, especially as the drive to carry on with the others is still alive. I suppose writing is a little like Lord Wotton’s remark in Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray about a cigarette being the perfect type of pleasure, because it is exquisite but yet it leaves one unsatisfied. A pleasure that leaves you satisfied is one that ceases to be a pleasure the moment it stops. In terms of physical responses, sex and food are of this kind. Right after you’ve had either, the last thing you immediately want is more (This was brilliantly phrased by Shakespeare in one of his sonnets – “Past reason hunted; and no sooner had, past reason hated”). 

Writing (for me at least), on the other hand, has usually been like the opposite of sex and food, in that the more one engages with it the more exquisitely satisfying it becomes. I suppose that’s because writing is an extension of thinking, and thinking is one of those delights that just keeps opening up new vistas and horizons in one’s cognition, reminding us that even with a full life our actual time on earth is dwarfed by our aspired achievements.  

In other news, I'm also going to be making a foray into the area of publishing videos, which is exciting, so watch this space!