Ethics is the new competitive environment
What is central to business is the joy of creating.
I think writers have to be able to enjoy solitude rather than just endure it. I've always enjoyed being left alone with my imagination, ever since I was a kid.
It's easier to forget the past if nothing ever reminds you of those leathery old scars that can never again feel any loss or pain; the old wounds must be kept open if you are going to remember their cause and regret their occurrence.
The new century will see unimaginable levels of wastefulness and extravagance, but it will also be an age in which the individual human being acquires a true and universally recognised value.
I keep to a minimum dialect, in-jokes about football (soccer) teams and soap opera characters, so as not to lose North American readers.
I used to write my own versions of famous tales, such as William Tell or Robin Hood, and illustrate them myself, too. When I entered my teens, I got more into horror and science fiction and wrote a lot of short stories. A literary education complicated things and for many years I wrote nothing but poetry. Then I got back to story-telling.
I like newspaper stories that are incomplete, that give me room to imagine the rest. It's no good to me reading about something that's all neatly solved and wrapped up. That's why so many of my stories revolve around human psychology, around why someone commits a certain crime, or series of crimes. I don't profess to know the answers but I like to explore the possibilities.
I'm hoping to know and teach a Gospel that is true to Scripture - and the Gospel that I see in the Bible is COSMIC (big enough to redeem all of Creation) and RELATIONAL (getting at the root of the Fall - the loss of our relational capacities).
The Gospel that worked in the 20th Century may not work in the 21st Century. The reason is because it is truncated. It only speaks of "Sin and Salvation" and not of the COSMIC GOSPEL that transforms all things.
Sometimes during the two-year curriculum, every MBA student ought to hear it clearly stated that numbers, techniques, and analysis are all side matters. What is central to business is the joy of creating.
If you like Harlan Coben, you’ll love Linwood Barclay.
