Books aren't written-they are rewritten. Including your own. It is one of teh hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.
Michael Crichton
I committed myself to finishing one book...well, the rewriting of one book I have previously written to make it more "real" to myself and others. I needed to redirect and concentrate my focus from all the many writing projects I am working on to one. I wanted to take one writing endeavor that I could also focus my "speaking on". (To start speaking again, I need something to direct the speaking on. Books are usually needed to be recognized in this area by speaking bureaus and such.)This particular book represents my major focus in healing and in yoga: samskara release. I want to share what I have learnt to date with hope that doing so will not only give me a platform on which I can help others, but that will enhance my personal learning journey and my own healing.
Speaking? Who wants to hear an old woman speak about those types of things, crazy lady?
I really don't know. I also don't know who will read this book that I will focus all my attention on in the upcoming weeks and months. (Once I am committed to a writing project, it gets most of me until it is done.) I can't think about anything other than the completion of this book in a way that satisfies this "me". Just like I couldn't think too much of the "after this is done" component of the English Learning book or the writing guides for youth I recently wrote and published, or the many completed mannuscripts for novels, other non-fiction, and poetry that has poured through me over the years. So much writing, I completed. So much writing I started without completing too. I may not be the best writer in the world but I am certainly a prolific one lol.
Copies of these effort and time consuming projects, that took so much of my focus and energy when I was writing them, are simply sitting on my book shelf collecting dust now. A few people have them...not everyone I intended them for... but a few. Still, I knew, from the moment I typed the first word, that my job was to write them and then get just one reader to read them so I had the sense of a completed cycle. That's it! What happend to them after that was never my responsibility, or even my business I suppose. I write them and get at least one reader to read them and my work here is done. The rest, I knew, was up to something much bigger than this human I call "me".
And there are times when I am called back to a project, like this one, with a certain internal whisper, "Rewrite this! This could be good." Hmm!
So, here I am rewriting a book I feel compelled to write so that I not only get one reader, but so that I will eventually get one listener to hear me as I go from writing to speaking about this. So, cra-cra, I know. I am in my sixties for goodness sake and I am obeying a calling probably meant for a much younger version of myself. Sigh.
One thing this focused writing gives me is a sense of purpose...a sense of creative focus. It takes my ADHD writer's mind and redirects it so it isn't all over the place. Having one thing...rather than a million scattered things...to focus on puts a well intended meaning into my day. Each project I devote myself to finishing gives me purpose and I so enjoy the process. I enjoy the process because I truly love writing. I also enjoy the sense of accomplishment I get with every 2000 words or so written; the sense of achievement I get with every chapter completed; and the sense of "Oh wow! Look what I did!" when I am holding a copy of it in my hand. Hmm!
I love thinking as I write that what I write will have meaning and purpose for someone else someday too. That it will be helpful and beneficial, that it will serve...if not in this life time of mine...after I am gone, possibly. And again, that is beyond my responsibility or control. Life will decide the outcomes of these projects...I just have to remain completely and fully in every moment of them.
All is well.
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