May 14, 2011 The writing continues, the direction becomes murky

I continue to work on my book, though the words don't come as quickly as I'd like, and the direction is murky at best.  When I sit down to write, I find that I just spill out whatever is on my mind at the time, whether it was impacted by the day's events, a dream, or just my mind's meanderings.  What I am finding is that I seem to be evolving away from the original title into something more like "Life after suicide: healing and forgiving".  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just that as I get into the project, it, as I rather suspected, begins, in part, to write itself.  I don't seem to have a lot of control over what I'm going to write next.  I just sit down at the computer and the words come out.  I may struggle, at times over which word to use in a particular place, but the words that are coming out cover a particular aspect of my parents' lives or an aspect of my mindset.  Either way, they evolve into something over which I have very little control.  Sure, when it's all down, I'll certainly have editorial control and will decide what order all of my little snippets will take, but by then, the tale will be told, and I'll just be cleaning it up a bit.  I'm also finding that when I sit down to write, time becomes meaningless.  I may feel that I've only been writing for an hour or less, but when I look at the clock on my computer, two or three hours have actually passed.  Granted, each sitting produces a minimum of about 1200 words these days, and despite the fact that I have not managed to write every day, I still am closing in on 10,000 words already.  Clearly, the more days a week I sit down and write, the sooner it will be ready to organize and edit, but I also want to make sure I include what needs to be there, and that can't be rushed or glossed over. 

I have found, though, that in sitting down to work on the book, using the same approach I use for this blog seems to be the most effective.  I simply start writing whatever happens to come into my head.  As I write, what I've written causes other things to come to mind, and they, too, ultimately appear on the screen.  It's not an organized or practical way to write, but my thoughts get written down and that's the ultimate goal.  And for those thoughts which don't fit into the book or just to comment on how the writing is going, I still have my little blog in which to vent and dump and share and whatever else my flying fingers need to do.    I'm also finding that I'm putting the "notes" option on my iPhone to good use when a thought comes to mind that needs to be recorded now.  I think there's a voice recorder too, which I'll have to check into for those times when I'm driving and can't stop to type.

Love and light.