A Collection of Questions and Answers

This is a listing of some questions that readers have asked of me, and my answers. If you have a question you’d like to submit, please click on the button below.

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The Rhythm of the Format

Julianne says: “I really love the mythological quality of the first chapter. The writing spirals around and around in formation of something mysterious, expanding and contracting, leaving the reader (me) feeling caught up in the Creation of my own life story.

“David- what is the rhythm to how the lines are written so poetically? Is it an organized pattern or randomness?”

It started out “organically”—in other words, I had no real deliberate pattern except for what seemed to feel right at the time, and over time there was indeed a sort of a syntax that emerged and developed (though I’ve never really documented it). It’s still loose, however; I’m sure there are places where I split lines one way, and split them another way in other places.

I played with these kinds of line breaks in the first writings I did many, many years ago, not long out of college. I started playing with them again as I began the first drafts of the book. I honestly figured that the line breaks would be taken out of the dialogue (but left in for the “story text” of the creation story), but I was pleasantly surprised when readers of early drafts very much liked what I’d done, so I got to keep them in.

DC

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The Two-Column Layout

Anonymous asks: “How did you decide on the two column layout, where you have the Seeker on the right side of the page, and the Sage on the left?”

At first, in early drafts, there was only one column, with a similar pattern to the line breaks in the text that are found in what I call the ‘story text’—the text that is the actual story of the creation of the Universe, galaxies, stars, etc., all the way through the Story of Planetary Mind.

I think I remember the dialogue becoming a bit too complicated and hard to read on the page. I also recalled how my old Bible had two columns in it, and somehow the Sage migrated to one side, and the Seeker to the other, trying to mimic what I had remembered (though that didn’t happen with the “story text”).

DC