Writing

I had forgotten what it was like and how it worked. For the past two weeks the publisher had asked me (twice!) to put in the proposal for the book on emotions. I had thought about it, meant to start it, “ummed and ahhed” about it all and nothing had happened.


To all you smokers out there, remember the cool, smooth flavour of Camel.


Well stuff was happening but it was all behind the scenes. My mind, as I ate my dinner, went for my walking exercise, bathed and other such domestic tasks was slowly but surely getting it together. How do you put together an 80,000 word manuscript? What is the overall structure of the thing which of course is the most important part of all. It was not like I had set myself the task to ‘get the overall structure of the book’ it was kind of thinking about this bit here and that bit there. Definitely done in a non systematic way.

On my computer desk top is the folder which has all the stuff in it for what the publisher is wanting. It just sits there in the bottom left hand corner. Today I sat down at my computer and opened up the folder. I had no intention of doing that, it kind of just happened. Then three hours later it was done. It was one of those things where you start something and then you look at the clock and realise three hours have gone by. All of a sudden you realise you have that sort of numb feeling behind your eye balls because your concentration has been so intense for such a protracted period of time.



It reminded me of how I wrote the manuscript for the book on working with suicidal individuals. I never forced anything, it happened and came when it wanted. At times I was a bit concerned as I would go for a week or two with out writing anything. But then it would come and I would write a whole bunch of stuff.

Back to the current book.

I have an exercise for anyone out there who might like to do such a thing. You need to get four separate pieces of paper (Blank sheets with no lines on them).

On the first page draw a picture of an angry person
On the second page draw a picture of a sad person
On the third page draw a picture of a scared person
On the fourth page draw a picture of a happy person

Then if you like send them to me and I will analyse them.



Graffiti