Ask the Author: David Amerland
Answered Questions (12)
David Amerland
That's an interesting question, particularly seeing how I often regard my life as a mystery to be understood. I mean, why am I the way I am? Why am I not different to what I have become? Why do I find myself thinking almost obsessively about justice and social balance and social equality when I personally am not disadvantaged (or, at least not significantly) and it isn't part of my job description to do so? In trying to understand this about myself I often travel, mentally, to my childhood, my upbringing, the experiences I had as a child.
Wouldn't it make it a cool plot for a book to discover that something manifests and guides us when we are young and it matures with us, as we age? It could be a spirit but that's a trite plot point, but how about a bacteria? Something that invades us and takes root in us and then it restructures our brain so that we are not controlled exactly but we are definitely guided towards specific things.
Far-reaching as this may sound I'd be willing to entertain it as a viable alternative to the theory that some people simply couldn't careless about the world and live only within the boundaries and well-being of their own body. Then, again, maybe they are the ones that have been 'infected' somehow, their brains truncated and damaged and the ones who feel that the world is our home and all the people are our brothers and sisters are the normal ones.
Wouldn't it make it a cool plot for a book to discover that something manifests and guides us when we are young and it matures with us, as we age? It could be a spirit but that's a trite plot point, but how about a bacteria? Something that invades us and takes root in us and then it restructures our brain so that we are not controlled exactly but we are definitely guided towards specific things.
Far-reaching as this may sound I'd be willing to entertain it as a viable alternative to the theory that some people simply couldn't careless about the world and live only within the boundaries and well-being of their own body. Then, again, maybe they are the ones that have been 'infected' somehow, their brains truncated and damaged and the ones who feel that the world is our home and all the people are our brothers and sisters are the normal ones.
David Amerland
This is a really hard question to answer. Each book involves so much research, thinking and effort that unless it feels like the book I am most proud of at that moment in time, it just isn't going to happen. Having said that, the most labor-intensive book I've ever written is "The Sniper Mind". It took a full three years of research and writing and involved my learning an entirely new, to me, field of science. The workload and pressure was such, at times, that there were moments I doubted I could finish it. Because of the effort it took it remains, at present, the one writing achievement I feel most proud of because, in retrospect, all the other books were easier to write.
David Amerland
Take me to the Star Trek universe already please. Not just because the Earth has united into one global government, not just because we have made contact with xenoforms and now have the United Federation of Planets, not just because, phasers, electronic translators, communicators, star ships and warp drive but ALSO because computers can understand nuanced context in the spoken word, extract entities, run probably veracity and answer in complete, meaningful sentences! I would be talking to the Star Ship computer ALL day!
David Amerland
Pichler's "Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information" and Thacker's "In the Dust of this Planet".
David Amerland
My cell phone battery is down to 10%. I can't find my charger!
David Amerland
Jeannie, seeing how I just got to reply to this you can begin to guess the "how". :) Really I need to be a little more switched on about more online places than I am at the moment. And, to get serious, on your question, I write the way you're taught not to. I put together ideas all the time and link each one with research, other people's thoughts, comments. Everything. Then, some of them become articles, some go nowhere and some become books and some of the ideas that started out as articles become books, case in point my latest one "The Sniper Mind" that took three years to complete and started out as an article: https://goo.gl/sVB51f.
Unlike the planned, orchestrated approach to writing that most writers go for I end up working in a Darwinistic, almost, way where what becomes what is determined by my assessment of time, impact and the value it can deliver. It is a little chaotic in that it forces me to juggle things in my head, so things that should fit in SEO have to compete with research and posts I am creating that are "marketing" and have a human element and then these have to find space with critical assessments of the impact of technology. It can be exhausting and I have had days when I had to force myself out of bed because the day seemed to be just so daunting. The upside is that this constant sense of discomfort forces me to look at everything with fresh eyes. It allows me to see overlapping connections and similarities in subjects that are not always obviously linked and it allows me to find the common drivers that motivate everything. I hope this answered your question :)
Unlike the planned, orchestrated approach to writing that most writers go for I end up working in a Darwinistic, almost, way where what becomes what is determined by my assessment of time, impact and the value it can deliver. It is a little chaotic in that it forces me to juggle things in my head, so things that should fit in SEO have to compete with research and posts I am creating that are "marketing" and have a human element and then these have to find space with critical assessments of the impact of technology. It can be exhausting and I have had days when I had to force myself out of bed because the day seemed to be just so daunting. The upside is that this constant sense of discomfort forces me to look at everything with fresh eyes. It allows me to see overlapping connections and similarities in subjects that are not always obviously linked and it allows me to find the common drivers that motivate everything. I hope this answered your question :)
David Amerland
I never had to. It's a thing only if you believe it is a thing, otherwise you just get days when you can't write easily because your thinking is woolly. Clarify things in your head and the writing flows.
David Amerland
These days, getting to hear directly from readers. In a more general sense, I just love the fact that I pull something vague from inside my head and hammer it into something that has real value.
David Amerland
Believe in what you do as a service not an art. The art side of it will come as the service side of it refines itself.
David Amerland
Two books, back-to-back I can't yet tell you anything without hunting you down, so I'd better say nothing. :)
David Amerland
I get excited by the ideas I have to communicate. Then I get depressed as the writing and the edits pile up and then I tell myself that since I got this far and I have done all this work I may as well finish it. :)
David Amerland
In the same place I get the idea for every book: the problems I come across as I advise large multi-nationals on their marketing and communication problems. Each book is designed to provide the answer to a problem, otherwise it's not doing it's job.
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