Addies Friendly Feelings

(Continued from previous post ….).

So, unsurprisingly I kept writing.

Pretty much each Saturday through September 2024 onwards, and most Sundays too I would walk down to my local Waterstones cafe, hoping I would get at small table seat, and start building up coffee stamps, sometimes lunch too, and do at least 3 hours writing.

I said that I was inspired by the stories of my childhood, he everyday things that happened to me, and in the main the writing flowed. It was mainly a conversation between writing James (me), the memory of my childhood experience (narrator James) and the boy undertaking the experiences in the story (my little James), oh and the other characters in the story.

The coloured pens helped, as did writing it all out by hand. It was as if I was able to feel the memories, talk to the memories and also in some occasions talk to the memories in a way that that little boy didn’t hear the first time around. Using pens and colours, helped me to keep it fun and lively, as characters voices had different colours.

There were definitely some times when I didn’t want to face writing the story, it was too much, too poignant, too many raw feelings, but I decided that these were places I needed to go to, even if these parts of stories never saw the light of day, there was nothing that as a memory that couldn’t be written about, couldn’t be held safe through a conversation.

The more I wrote, the lighter I felt. The happier I felt.

Eventually…

….because the other reality was that it was emotional work, I would get back to my flat in the afternoon and be pretty exhausted, but energised.

And at the same time I was doing therapy. There was a fascinating moment in it when my therapist was trying to work out which ‘James’ he was talking to, present, narrator, or child me… either way he could sense what all this was doing for me. It wasn’t just a book that I was writing. I was breathing love into the situations of my childhood, holding them, and giving them space to be cleansed.

By the end of November 2023, I had about 18,000 words in 9 short story chapters, each around specific memories, and each describing how a boy interacted with a specific feeling.

I then had to work out what to do with what I thought was a precious self loving gift, that through writing a children’s book, realised it was healing myself.

First things first though. The writing in pen had to be typed up.

And this took time, and compared to the creative aspect, I struggled with the motivation to do this, to start with.

And as I got to Christmas 2023, I had decisions to make.

So thats where I leave this for now, and in the next part i’ll share about what happened in the new year, the story I wrote next, and what happened as I started to work with an editor. It was also early in 2024, when the main characters name changed.

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(If you would like to read more about my therapy journey, that piece is here)