Welcome!
You are now in Roland’s World.
I am writing a Book. This is my signature project, a project I have been working on for years. Everyone who knows me well has heard of The Book.
You are in my living room. This space is my Publishing House.
The Book doesn’t have a name yet. The Publishing House doesn’t have a name yet [Roland’s World for now]. All in good time.
This Publishing House is my forum for producing the Book. Inside this space, you will see the structure material for the Book, which means background information for the story. This background will be included at the back of the Book as appendix material.
The Book is a story about a school called the Academy.
The Academy is a thinly veiled metaphor for the School of Life. Technically, it is The Academy of Life Studies.
A list of the teachers of the Academy will be included. Also the Administration, including Principals and Head of Faculty.
A list of the students in the story will also be included. Each student is a human archetype, a particular type of person, and the book will include a brief description of those archetypes drawn from The Enneagram and the Michael System.
The Academy has a curriculum, called Life: A Field Manual. The Field Manual is extensive: many chapters, many subjects, years in the making. The school’s course outline comes from the Field Manual and will also be included.
Ok, I think that covers the basics.
Thank you for your support!
Roland
Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Life: A Field Manual is the foundation of the curriculum at the Academy.
The Academy is a real school, it exists in reality, although not as a cluster of buildings in the actual physical world as we know it.
The Book is a story based on students and teachers who are part of the Academy.
Life: A Field Manual answers the big questions in life:
• what they didn’t teach you in school
• principles of how things work in this world
• enduring elements of the human condition
What is life. What is this place. Why are we here. What happens to us while we are here in this world, in this human body, and how does it all work.
Life: A Field Manual is hundreds of pages long, if not more, the part that has already been written. It’s my life’s work, my masterpiece. My Publishing House, this Substack site, is just the tip of the iceberg, since it only just got established in late August 2020.
To get a taste of the field manual, take a peek at the article titled Partial History of the World.
The Objective while Writing the Book:
Requirements for the book and for articles here in this forum:
• must be loving and feel good, must be joyous
• must be simple and easy, clear and effective
• must be entertaining and fun (humor, silliness, cleverness, enchantment, inspiration)
• must contain all the essentials (accurate, reliable, durable, timeless)
Working on my writing style. Have books on writing by Sol Stein and others. Aiming for clear and simple. Direct. This particular paragraph mimics Talking Heads music: concentrated staccato bursts.
Employ Chicago Book of Style? Perhaps. For now:
a proper name that identifies People: Talking Heads
a proper name that identifies Things: Back to the Future
a World, a Universe, a mythology: Star Wars OR the Star Wars Universe
Perhaps at times we fail to excel and to reach our highest goal, but if you shoot for the stars, you may fall short and still hit the moon.