My first book, Making a U-Turn, was a short book of poems written during a dark season of my life. I was in my mid forties. My wife had left me – for issues on her side of the street and for mine. After almost 15 years it caught me off guard. I really thought I wasn’t going to make it. Writing helped me live, process, and go another direction which is what u-turns are all about.
So, for me, the work of writing has a few steps;
First, I discover a premise that keeps me awake in the night – a premise to write on that I’m an expert at, a premise I know a lot about. That premise guides the entire process.
Then, I collect material. For Chasing the Sage, I’ve been collecting material for over 40 years in the form of books, movies, articles, journals, tons of notes in keep forever books, evernotes of stories, ideas, links to blogs, and pictures.
Next I do a brain dump on a yellow tablet. With Chasing the Sage, I am ripe with ideas, they flow like a fast wide river in early spring.
I take the brain dump and stare at it for a few days. Slowly going over almost 3,000 words of ideas, bullet points, and sribbles. It is the staring and not rushing that allows themes to emerge. And with Chasing, three themes are emerging – these three themes are in rough unedited words:
- The movement from orphan to son
- The movement from boy to man
- Chasing the Sage
So, to give an update on where I am now I am going over again the brain dump; cutting and pasting in Google Docs and putting them into one of the three themes. This is very exciting.
i work about two hours, nose to the grindstone. When the two hours are up I save the file, shut it down, and go for a trail run.