This week, we’re talking with Lincoln Stoller about his book Becoming Lucid: Self-Awareness in Sleeping & Waking Life, Hypnotic Practice in Lucidity & Dreams
Tell us something unexpected about yourself!
I feel that I've reached a state of enlightenment. This generates a continuous stream of ideas.
Why do you write?
This “enlightenment,” as I call it, is both fed by me and feeds me. It compels me to speak honestly and directly in a way that connects with people.
Where did you get the inspiration for your current book?
Looking into the past, the future, and the widest possible expanse of the present.
All of my books seem to tie together as some aspect of a single system. That system is basically what I perceive, combined with what I infer.
What do you enjoy the most about your genre?
After many decades of exploring one or another facet of the world–physical, intellectual, and emotional–all I've learned has become various aspects of the same perspective. My writing is a way of keeping myself in the center of it all.
The resulting understanding is starting to make sense of things. Other people are finding it useful for them as well.
How would you describe your writing process?
Everything I write has to have an emotional impetus, some deeper sense of truth and urgency.
The uncertainties I used to have about myself I now recognize as obstacles to insight, that are created by people living in a kind of shadow world.
The more resistance I now get, the more likely it is that my writings are striking their target. I follow the resistance.
What do you think authors have to gain from participating in social media?
For me, it's the dissemination of ideas and the congregation of like minds.
Many of us are looking for community–and I am too–but social media does not create community. It distributes ideas much like advertising. Who comes together and how they come together remains undefined and social media does nothing to define it.
Community does not lend itself to being “virtual.” The connections created by the internet are too nebulous and noncommittal to be called community in the meaningful and emotional sense.
What advice would you have for other writers?
Only write when called.
Don't bother to squeeze out defective products unless it's just an exercise to see what you can make of sh*t. That can be an interesting project, but I think it's better to write from inspiration. It has more potential.
If I don't feel I have something important to say, then I'm fairly certain that I can find something more important to do.
How do you select your books’ titles and covers?
The titles just seem to come to me. I usually start with a working title and then something develops. Either that, or the title comes from the initial inspiration.
Cover are a different matter and I have not settled on a process. We're told to create covers that are genre-specific and derivative in their message. I might agree with that for fiction, but I don't write fiction.
Most nonfiction covers are topic-specific, not genre specific. I prefer to create my covers using the main symbols that pertain to the topic. If I wrote about Crist I'd include a cross. If I wrote about Nazis I'd include a swastika. I have written about mythology and I've included mythic symbols.
If I can't compose it myself, I'll collect some images and give it to someone on Fiverr.
What's your next step?
My writing is an extension of my psychotherapy practice, social activism, and personal journey. I try to keep them all expanding and working together.
It's a slow process that has frustrated me in the past. Now, I seem to be topping-out in many areas at once. As a result I feel that I can continue incrementally.
The biggest risk is becoming over extended or under funded.
What book do you wish you had written?
The books I write support the ideas I explore. If there's a book I feel needs to be written, then I aim to write it.
To wish to have written a book that one is not ready to write makes no sense to me.
How do you react to seeing a new review for your book?
Great, unsolicited insight from an insightful stranger is a great boon. Stupid comments from ignorant people can also be fortifying, as they help draw the line that defines what you're not.
The most dispiriting reviews are misunderstandings written by people from whom I would expect insight.
I have gotten a few flames, not as reviews but as emails or blog post comments. I have special lists for those people which, I hope, will permanently exclude them in the future.
As I become more widely read I may need a thicker skin. As long as the balance is positive as I see it, I will accommodate. It takes practice.
It's important that you never feel that your back is against the wall.
