Addies Friendly Feelings

It was probably only after the first month of writing that I had to face the difficult question. What would I do with the material? Had I even given any thought to how I might publish it?

At that point I think I had written maybe a few thousand words, a few of the stories had been written in these early first drafts, and it was clear to me anyway that writing was had become more than just another idea, there was something in this.

But I was so aware of what I had done previously, and as I wrote in a previous piece, part of my trauma, and the complete lack of support I had for anything, meant that I easily caved in, gave up when something got difficult, I had at that point just stopped developing a photography process because of a major breakdown, and that had been the same with many initial ideas in the past. So I was having to be careful about what i did at that time that might cause me to give up. For example, I was so aware that if I had thought of this as a big project, with lots to do in it i was likely, without much inner resilience, give up. The only resource I had was myself, and I was emotionally fragile.

I was also aware that writing the kind of book that I was writing was also taking it out of me, so I did pace myself to one day per weekend often, and a day to chill. At the same time, I felt like there was something in this, there was something in what I was writing that at some point it might warrant a wider audience. Yet, I had no idea, of what I should do, or the process and I was being tentative.

I had a conversation with a friend Tim Lewis, who had self published a number of books, and he shared with me a little about the self publishing route. I took notes, and saved them for if required. It was helpful. Yet my project was still so raw, and so new that I just wasnt sure.

I also then started to look at the publishing route. Armed with a journal pad full of coloured pen writing and a few outlines of conversational stories, I made the mistake of looking the the requirements for publishers, and discovered literary agents ( I noted one in the acknowledgements of the book ‘The Salt Path’ that I just read) .

As I looked through the requirements for literary agents, they wanted proposals, chapters, synopsis, and were said to be dealing with 100’s of applicants per week. I wasnt quite as daunted as I thought, but it was big, a challenge, and I had a very long way to go before should even think about applying, a long way to go.

So, even though I now had this information, I had to keep it at bay for a while. The story needed my full attention ( in amongst life stuff like work, and being in therapy), and I needed the story too to keep writing out memories, incidents and the conversations of that time. I was realising that I couldn’t write if I was burdening myself with the expectations of what this could be. Or if I needed it to be anything else than a process of writing, enjoyable, fun, therapeutic writing that was restoring my soul. The rest, the process could wait. But at least I had an idea about what the future path might be.

There was a possibility of a dream, but it was much much more important for me to stay in the moment, the writing, the colours and the conversations. The future could wait, I had to keep writing, keep having my subconscious, mind and heart write.

The possibility did give me something to work towards, as even then I felt I had something. Just that it was very very raw. And I was on an emotional cliff edge with limited resources.

Nothing was ruled out in terms of the process, but at this time, I didnt start any of it. The books and stories needed time to just be created and made.

So, by the end of January 2024, I had written 10 short conversational stories that could be a short story series, each of around 1600-2000 words, and also a story that was a follow up to this series that was around 5000 words. As I said the writing flowed.

Thank you, in the next part I’ll share about what happened when I started working with an editor.

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