Xlibris Publishing introduces Stephen Clark, author of Exploring the Landscape of the Mind.
I have always been an avid reader and so it is fitting that my book Exploring the Landscape of the Mind: Understanding Human Thought and Behaviour had its beginnings in three other books. Some twelve or so years ago I happened upon Robert Wright’s book ‘The Moral Animal.’ It aroused my interest in the growing interdisciplinary field bridging biological evolution and psychology and led, in turn, to the discovery of Steven Pinker’s ‘How the Mind Works’ and ‘On Human Nature’ by the eminent Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson. Of course, Charles Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species’ has remained a lasting inspiration.
Further reading made me soon realise that if I was going to be able to properly order this new and growing knowledge the best way to do it was to write my own book, to structure all this information in some coherent fashion. Could I do this? Well, there was only way to find out. The perennial problem of human aggression seemed a good place to start and so, having read some of the literature on the topic I wrote ten or twelve pages. At this point I had no idea what form the whole book might take but as I wrote something on various other topics, an overall structure began to emerge. I was well on my way and gaining in confidence.
I experienced no difficulty in maintaining interest, even fascination with what human kind does and why. Doing the extensive reading necessary on a great variety of topics was a pleasure. Knowing when to stop reading and start writing wasn’t always easy. Organising and explaining sometimes complex research findings was, at times a difficult challenge. What worked best for me at this writing stage was to set a daily goal of two pages. I didn’t always achieve this by any means but a good discipline was to make myself sit there and attempt to get something down on paper for at least two hours. Each day would start by reading what had been written the day before and making changes. At the end of each session it was helpful in getting started the next day to make a few notes on where to go from where I had left off.
All of this will apply mainly if not entirely to the writing of non-fiction. This was a natural choice for me as my background was in the physical and biological sciences. Even so, what I set out to do was a bit daunting as I was venturing into a whole new field of evolutionary psychology based on the insight that the way we think and behave can be explained in part by understanding the past environments to which we adapted in order to survive. If it was any consolation, I told myself that others were unlikely to be any better at venturing outside their chosen speciality.
So in the end it took me twelve years to write my book. It wasn’t always easy; in fact at times it was very difficult. But the rewards in terms of a sense of accomplishment have been immense. I was fortunate to choose Xlibris as my publisher. It would be wrong to think that once you have a manuscript the rest will be smooth sailing. There is a huge amount that remains to be done in terms of navigating copyright restriction, formatting the text, indexing names and topics and attending to other matters of detail. The Xlibris staff were most helpful in guiding me through this unfamiliar maze and to producing a book that I can be proud of. It has also received some recognition in being a winner of the Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award and also the Eric Hoffer eBook Non-Fiction Category.
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