Writing Ride – the back story…

Photo: Gus’s ashes.

Ride is a book that has come about because an internal nagging wouldn’t go away. I tried to ignore the nagging and decide it was born from an impractical unachievable dream that was irrelevant in my new reality.  It wouldn’t go away so – In the end I surrendered and ‘put aside’ 9 months in 2017 to write – just to see what happened.

I had written short notes over the previous years – of key words, and sometimes I used them as starting points. Sometimes I sat at my computer and the words would just flow from my fingers. Sometimes they would not and I would go walking in the hills and ponder what it was I was trying to say. Sometimes when I would review the words I had written I was amazed at what I read and wondered where they had even come from.

The process of writing was challenging and also incredible joyful and I felt like I was developing a new craft. The balance of surrendering to the internal impulse of allowing the writing to just ‘happen’ and my mind wanting to understand what the whole thing was about was interesting to observe as well as be a part of – I guess this is the creative process maybe?

When I ‘finished’ Ride it sat for almost a year before the real editing began and that editing continued for months and months!! Ride is now somewhat smaller than the original version however some of the removed content will turn up in these blog pages from time to time.