Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Hey! Interesting thing. Remember that ‘How to Publish Independently …etc’ thing we attended a couple of weeks ago? Well, it biweekly (or is that, ‘half-monthly’ or…duodecimally?) lol whatever.
We may not have written about, no, wait, we did.
Hold on… we’ll check, (do your own visual: tottering off to a bookshelf over-loaded with dusty folders… wait. you people have read this blog for long enough to know where we’re going.)
New Readers? We’re nothing if not about imagining the imagination of the Readers and Visitors. Vicarious? Thy name is Curator (of the Wakefield Doctrine). Like ever adolescent daydream about the first real date (“I’ll do that and then, they’ll probably will say…and I can…”)
you’ve all been young, right? Don’t blame the messenger.
ok. just checked. Apparently we have not yet updated y’all on how the first installment of our attending the ‘How to Write Publish Good Seminar’ went.
Damn! Avoided a RePrint. And, just between you and us and the lampost* it was…interesting. Actually, more than interesting.**
Quick backstory: Four Part Series ‘Self-Publishing and Making a Career Writing Fiction’ hosted by the Ashaway Free Library. Taught by local author Gage Greenwood.
As a matter of fact, the first session prompted a serious discussion among some of the followers of everyone’s favorite personality theory. On Saturday Night’s call-in we had Denise and Roger1 on and that resulted in a very interesting and informative discussion of the primary take-away from the moderator of the seminar: “The best strategy in independent publishing is to focus on developing a fan base. A personal fan base.”
First discussion was with Phyllis. (New Readers: she is a roger with a significant secondary clarklike aspect. That latter results in insights into the Doctrine as a whole that would be impossible to one who, though a roger, lacked a strong-enough secondary clark)
She say, “That makes complete sense. If you’re going to introduce something new to your Herd, it better have your stamp of approval. And no roger is going to like something that they don’t know that a lot of other rogers already know. …you know?”
yeah. you read that right. Personal as in, ‘get your Readers to like you first and then your stories.’ Get one and the rest will follow.
The discussion on Saturday Night’s call-in was along similar lines. It did, however, continue and explore the thesis: can a clark do the self-promotion that is inferred by this simple sounding strategy? There followed a spirited discussion of Herd, Stephen King, faking emotional content and, at the bottom of it all, the fundamental proposition of the Wakefield Doctrine:
We are, all of us, born with the potential to relate ourselfs to the world around us in three characteristic styles. At a very early age this relationship is so established as to become the personal reality in which we grow, mature and otherwise develop our social/interpersonal strategies for getting through life. While we lock into one, (and only one), relationship, i.e. as an Outsider (clark), a Predator (scott) or a Herd Member (roger) we never lose the potential for relating as do ‘the other two’. Some, we might add, have this potential in greater amounts than do others. As curator we might be described as having ‘a significant secondary scottian and a weak tertiary rogerian aspect’.
The Doctrine maintains, ‘Hey! You coulda been a clark or a scott… or, even a roger. Don’t worry about acquiring something, some knowledge from the world. Look within. The relationship that offers the way and style of living that is integral to your contemplated (self)-improvement is already within you. Practice, yo. Practice.
*No, since you ask, we have no idea what prompted the scottian accent.
** hey! thanks for the music vid prompt!!
- who said that? yeah. you’re right! That roger. the lifeform, the Herd, the 2 plus 2 can only equal 4, the ‘There is a Right Way and a bunch of other ways, we’ll be happy to make that distinction for you”.
*
