Setting the Tone

 

If it were 'easy' everyone would be doing it...

This morning I re-wrote my 'introduction' to the collection of essays I am thinking of writing and sent it off to a friend for some feedback.

This is always a perilous time for a writer.  Have I hit the right note?  Have I selected a target audience that will be interested in what I have to say?

For me writing is all about the first sentence.  Or in the case of a 'book', the introduction.  

I have been writing and setting aside some essays, and an introduction that I knew in my heart was not appropriate - it was too flippant.  But Impostor Syndrome meant I needed to get that out of my system before I could get past the critical part of me that is never satisfied.  

While I was in that liminal space of having the idea and not managed to find a way forward that made any kind of sense, I continued to read, to think, and even to dream (which is just thinking but not thinking about the fact you are thinking).  And letting the various thoughts in my head percolate.  

During this time I left my mind open to other influences and information - articles online, Elaine Igoe's book, memories of other books I had read, textile oriented, of course, but other topics.  Because I have always read widely, if not deeply, being interested in human behaviour.  I have watched documentaries on tv about archeology, history and technology.

And because I'm 'old' (we need to stop framing being old as negative!) I have lots and lots of memories of things to draw on.

I had a difficult night again last night and dark o'clock means most of my filters are off and as I sat playing Scrabble the stew pot in the back of my mind continued to simmer and I remembered a 'story' I had read a long time ago.  It gave me an idea of how to proceed

Instead of heading to the loom right away this morning, I opened a new file on the desktop and wrote out a two page introduction.  With this new approach came a title.  It is a very loose framework, if you can even call it that.  I also have a bit of a framework I worked out on the drive to Vancouver in January, so I have something on which to hang the various essays.

I have two written and others clamoring for my attention, but they need to be reworked to reflect the concept I came up with overnight.  One may be suitable just as it is, the other may need to be tweaked.  The proto essays should fall into place when I get to them.

The essay format was chosen after reading a collection of essays that had such a loose framework, which I saw I could use.  I'm not writing a book that needs a story arc or a logical progression in terms of how the information is presented.  It's almost more like the Dancing Wu Li Masters.  I'm also thinking about how or if I even should, incorporate string theory (no not that kind of string, quantum physics string theory) into my story of actual string.

But that might be a step too far, given I don't understand all the quantum theory that goes into that sort of string theory!

But I have officially begun.  When will I end?  When I'm finished.  That's about all I can say, because it depends...