Tacit Knowledge I’ve Gained From Writing 26 Books
I can decipher grey language without too much effort...
Grey language basically consists of those documents you read that say absolutely nothing in perfect English. They're the equivalent of placing a password on speech. Things such as corporate jargon, military lingo, legalese, hegelian english, or poetics.
This type of language is not only annoying, but purposefully designed to confuse, beguile, belittle an audience, obscure faults, or feign responsibly. Hegelian is probably the best example of this. For if you've ever taken a philosophy class, you've no doubt ran into it. People such as Descartes, Kant, and worst of all… its creator… Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Famous for spinning long winded, incoherent reams of text that cause generations upon generations of pain. Long were the nights I had to spend sifting through pages of good arguments, encapsulated within what felt like quantum levels of computer encryption.
I can denounce and question the ideas of other authors…
The ability to denounce authors was a major turning point in my life that allowed me to expand into other genres. In order to do so, however, you have to have written a few books. Otherwise, it'll be difficult to remove them from the pedestal. I think this is because all throughout school, you read books by intellectual giants. Thus, you end up giving a sort of reverence to authors which is reinforced by administrators, teachers, and professors. A societally enforced respect that is difficult to dismantle unless you gain the ability to compare yourself to them on near equal, or equal terms. Even after writing several books (19 at the time,) I'd often see this on full display if I disagreed with the text, or overtly denounced a dead authors idea in the classroom. The idea that theories placed in books define the absolute truth of a subject, needs to be curtailed to some degree. People write books, not deities or creatures of divinity.
There are tiers of books…
I learned that there are different tiers between books. Just as people form hierarchies, books too have hierarchies. This was something learned once again, while attending college. Typically, if I told someone that I was an author and subsequently showed my books to them. They'd always ask about the chess books first. Before I'd ever written those books though, they'd always gravitate towards either the science fiction, or fantasy genres. This lead me to conclude that the chess books had more weight. Even with the poetry, essay, philosophy, and romance books we have listed, people still gravitate towards the ones about chess.
I believe this is because chess has more prestige than anything else I've written. Which lead me to conclude that people (at least in the west) give the most weight to subjects of high prestige, or difficulty. For example, if I had books listed titled, "quantum mechanics." or
"general relativity," they might ask about those first and perhaps chess second.
As a result, my sister and I built a theory around the prestige level, or tiers between books.
Tier 1 - High Prestige
⁃ Encyclopedias, dictionaries, physics, math, medical, chemistry, philosophy — hard sciences with few exceptions
⁃ Speciality books like Chess, Go, Shogi
⁃ The older the topic, the higher the prestige
Tier 2 - Prestige
⁃ Poetry, literary fiction (parables - example: Animal Farm,) academic books — history, sociology, religion, psychology books and educational textbooks
Tier 3 - Commercial
⁃ Low Prestige Books
⁃ Fiction - adult genre books: fantasy, mystery, science fiction
⁃ Non-fiction - self-help, how to books, non-fiction business books
Tier 4 - Romance, Juvenile Fiction, and Children’s Books
⁃ Middle grade, children’s - offer a virtue boost but zero prestige. The more juvenile a book’s target audience, the lower the prestige it has.
⁃ There is the perception that children’s books are easy to write.
⁃ Romance has no prestige in genre fiction because they are so prevalent and commercial. Romance is the best selling genre of any book in the commercial fiction market. It exchanges prestige for monetary gain.
Tier 5 - Erotica/Pornography
⁃ Negative Prestige
⁃ Have a negative hit to reputation, cause reputational damage.
Hello! We’re D.J. Hoskins
We are Davena and Jason Hoskins, co-authors of 30+ books and siblings who write under the pseudonym D.J. Hoskins. Three years apart and in our twenties, we have been fascinated by stories from a young age. Davena is a student attending Princeton University, and Jason attends Georgetown University.
