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Strephon’s Rewritten Jesus Novel Launched On Hub Pages

http://hubpages.com/hub/Why-I-Am-Writing-About-The-Jesus-Manuscript

The writing process is for me as follows.

1. Years of research into the content of the material, the reading and understanding of it.

2. The analyzing of the subject to bring out its problems, its issues, and then to solve them ahead of time before the actual dramatic writing. This has taken years with the Jesus material.

3. Why has it taken the eight years and longer with the Jesus novel? Because I was brought up in Christian boarding schools where they ritualized their story-version of the historical Jesus material, and this has got to have been gotten out of me. I am in no way a Christian writer, though any spiritual persons can enjoy and benefit from what I write, and have in the past with my many books.

4. Given the original events of the historical Jesus’ life and teachings his immediate followers preached a version of who Jesus was starting after his death. This is the Christian story called Christianity. Then subsequent editors and bishops for four hundred years modified further their versions of the Jesus story into the four official gospels and other material like Acts.

5. This Jesus Christ material was preached to millions, some who died because of these Christian beliefs, as in the Roman coliseum thrown to lions.

6. The greatest sales force in history, unless it was for the Koran, was set in motion by the early Church and continued throughout history until even today. These were priests and ministers and any ‘good Christians.’ The Christians had a novel called the Bible, especially the New Testament, that their first key writers wrote and their religious authorities compiled together. This great novel was sold again and again to the millions. What author these days can compete with the Bible? There are a few like professor Toilkin of Lord of The Rings, but where is his sales force to sell his novel to the masses? Well, the last Lord of the Rings movie has apparently done a great job to be viewed by masses of people and gain a cult following, as has the Harry Potter series of books.

7. Any writer, like this author, who tries to write a modern new novel of the Jesus material is faced with having already in their brain, the Christian version of what happened to Jesus, which even these authors call Jesus Christ. We also have the disadvantage of anti-Christian interest people projecting Christianity onto my Jesus novel just because of the word, Jesus.

8. Jesus is a personal name of a living wisdom teacher, a genius in religion, just as humanity has geniuses in all fields, whether nursing, doctoring, mothering, science research, physics, space exploration, and even politics.

9. The Jesus Christ material is inconsistent with the Jesus teachings in many places, as historical Jesus scholars have pointed out for over 200 years through careful scholarship.

10. So for a non-Christian, non-member of any religion, like myself, to write a Jesus novel, I have to work years at getting the Christian dogma and the Jesus Christ version out of my head, and I have to do this by understanding it. As a life-long professional Jungian psychologist I understand the Christian archetypes so I can separate them out from what most likely is scientifically based historical Jesus material in and out of the four gospels.

11. C.G. Jung before me separated himself from the Christian archetype, the Christian pattern of dogma and belief. When Jung as a genius boy of high intelligence had a dream of God shitting on the Basel cathedral and breaking in the roof, he was having a destiny dream that God was a human creation and that the Christian psyche had neglected the animal instincts. Of course Jung had to grow up first and become a psychiatrist and learn from Freud and studies in mythology before he could scientifically study Christianity as a psychological phenomena and separate himself out from it to see it objectively, which is the scientific method.

12. A reading of recent Jesus novels and ‘lives of Jesus’ shows us that they are poorly written mostly as novels and biographies for one very powerful reason. Their writers are still Christians, even if they are Jewish, like Norman Mailer, since he is part of the Christian culture also. All these writers, including even historical Jesus scholars, write dominated in their own brains by the Christian dogma. They still believe that the historical Jesus is somehow Jesus Christ, a magical being, a god-man. This was a prevalent mind set in ancient times for other religions as well, such as Dyonaisis of the Greeks, a dying and resurrected God.

13. No one still believing in the Jesus Christ archetype, even if they call it the ‘mystical Jesus,’ can possibly write a realistic novel or biography of only a historical wisdom teacher called Jesus. They will go ‘magical.’

14. Magical thinking was prevalent during Jesus’ time but he did not engage in it himself. The proof is that he created parables to teach practical wisdom. In these teaching parables the ‘master’ owns the vineyard or the servants and returns to make judgments as to whether the servants have done a positive job with their responsibilities. It is practical wisdom, even though Christian archetype influenced people put symbolic Christian interpretations onto these simple parables. Christians talk of ‘Jesus’ as Jesus Christ, the son of God. Jung called Christ an archetype, a universal symbol in the psyche of most of us in our Christian culture.

15. In the most likely historical Jesus material Jesus never defines God or calls himself God. This God stuff is early added material by the first Christians, such as Peter and Paul. Jesus does not see himself as Jesus Christ, the son of God. He does refer to himself as ’son of Man’ an obscure term from the Jewish Torah he adopted apparently to define his role, not his person.

16. Thus for a modern novelist, like this author, to write up a story of what could have been the real Jesus as traveling wisdom teacher, one must clear away the Jesus Christ material. This is no easy task in the psyche of this author, and it has taken years to do so. No magical thinking is to be used. Only scientific, objective thinking is to be combined with fictional imagination.

17. Fictional imagination is all right to use for the perceptive and skilled novel writer because to create dramatic events for the modern reader you have to create fictional experiences to go along with the historical Jesus ‘facts’ you believe you and the scholars have culled from the gospels, and including extra gospel material like the gospel of Thomas, not officially accepted by the Christian Church, and why should it be since it was never used and believed in by the millions of Christians who have lived and died over the centuries?

18. See Ann Rice’s attempts at writing a Jesus novel. While an excellent and dedicated writer, and a believing Catholic, as she says, her Jesus novel attempt is full of magical thinking. The boy Jesus can kill his playmates if he wants and also resurrect them. This stuff is not needed and sounds foolish because most educated people today do not engage that much in magical, symbolic thinking. They use scientific, realistic thinking to cross the street safely and drive their cars safely, though much unconscious symbolic thinking still exists in most people, as I have found, being a depth psychologist myself who has had to understand realistically modern emotional and life problems with my clients.

19. Now, as a committed modern novelist and book writer I must write a life of Jesus from a realistic point of view, as if Jesus the man and spiritual genius was living and teaching people today at this very moment somewhere. I may fail at writing an exciting and information filled novel because I don’t have the novel writing skills, having spent my professional life as a psychologist working in depth with people. However, if my writing style is good enough I certainly have far more psychological knowledge than maybe all professional and popular novelists and historical Jesus scholars. This knowledge will make a realistic and psychological life of Jesus come out of my writing process, surely.

20. The other major thing I have had to develop for myself is effective story-telling skills. This has taken years of study and practice writing words and writing stories also. I have developed over 2000 writing tips and structures into a usable collection called The Writer’s Interface, which I sell to other writers but also use primarily myself.

21. To write a successful novel that lots of readers will read in the thousands, if not the millions, you can’t just write up story content, this character did this, and so on. You must have an effective array of fiction function techniques that effectively dramatize story content for the reader, like building suspense to keep the reader reading. I believe I have done this now, yet I am yet to be tested with having lots of significant readers for my Jesus novel.

22. In 2004 I wrote a complete Jesus novel which I cut the pages for myself and made a book of it. One copy exists. It tells the story of Jesus’ life and teachings at around 120,000 words. I loved writing it. This book represented my current level of fiction-writing skills then. But upon analysis as a life-long writer myself who has published successfully non-fiction books that people have bought to the tune of 350,000 copies in eight languages, I realized that fiction, unlike non-fiction, has an extra level of writing techniques that dramatize the content of your story-telling. I needed to develop this meta level of fiction functions to write a successful Jesus novel.

23. This meant much long work, extending years, that no one paid me for, and indeed, as a person I am a poor person, supported by the state in outer life. No one pays you for the unknown usually but for what is already known, needed and works.

24. Thus then these last four years, The Writer’s Interface, 3 and 4 was created as full interactive files to go with the excellent organizing software, WIN, WriteItNow 4, which has just come out. This excellent software, combined with my own TWI 4, the Writer’s Interface 4, is the interface between using WIN or other writing organizing software and the end user, the writer, so that the writer can plan, research, organize and execute successful fiction as either a novel or screen play

25. If writers using WIN 4 combined with TWI 3 and 4 still cannot write a successful novel that others will read in the thousands, then maybe these writers do not have writing talent and story-telling imagination enough? You don’t know until you try, and that may take years of your spare time writing, learning, rewriting. It certainly has taken me years and years of spare time to develop my writing skills and understanding.

26. However, if you really use writing organizing software, such as the excellent WIN 4 and The Writer’s Interface, you will save yourself years of study and practice writing, plus going to creative writing courses and analyzing novels yourself. You will save years of lost time in your writing career. Now I call that value gained when you use someone else to train you in a professional skill.

27. My qualifications are as an expert psychologist who has sold one best seller, The Dream Cards, Simon & Schuster, and published in eight languages and sold 350,000 copies of my books. Professional surveys have shown that 7 out of 10 published novels and books fail to sell to readers to make the publisher and writer money enough to justify their efforts.

28. Don’t be an unrealistic fool as a wanting-to-be writer. Learn your craft, have a story to tell, and write, write, write. Also prove to yourself that you are a writer by getting thousands and thousands of readers as I did and popular novelists do. Note that trying to learn to story-tell and write successful novels from creative writing teachers, conferences, writing craft books or even people who set themselves up as professional editors is not likely to work for you or anyone else because almost all these people have never written a book in their life that gets thousands of readers.

29. Don’t be fooled. In life learn only from the successful and carry forward their discoveries and passion for the field.

30. Like a realistic fool, maybe, I am publishing my revised Jesus novel, chapter by chapter, free to visitors to read on the web as hubpages, so that I have the sense of being published, and maybe even get comments, but which cannot be the central thing. Getting published as soon as you write a chapter happened to Dickens and other Victorian writers because they were published chapter by chapter is cheap magazines that people bought and read every week or every month.  Now with the web I am attempting a similar thing. Already in the first week of this new venture I have had around 100 visitors to my hub pages to maybe read my first four chapters of the Jesus novel put there. I suggest you join us and if you like what you read pass the word around.

31. I strongly suggest also you buy and use The Writer’s Interface 3 & 4, but you will have to learn it by using it. TWI is not an easy start software but an advanced interface between organizing software and you the writer, the end user. It will only work for professionals with mental habits developed to stick to a thing and use that skill to maximum ability.

32. I have cancer, controlled at this time, we think, so I am writing with dedication and speed now in this year, 2009 into 2010, so you and I get the drama of the time deadline, as also used as a fiction device, like finding the bomb and the terrorists before the bomb explodes and the city or the nation is destroyed. Get me now if you tune into my style, or don’t get me at all! Others will anyway. That’s for sure!

Strephon Kaplan-Williams

http://hubpages.com/hub/Why-I-Am-Writing-About-The-Jesus-Manuscript

http://thewritersinterface.com

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