First Stabs At Writing

With the chickens let out of their pen – although perhaps, as I write, rampaging around the front garden and into the village – and lacking a huge pile of washing up next to the sink, and even having written my quota of Unsuitablogs for this week, I have been in a position to start writing. Actually I managed an hour or so on Tuesday, but have clocked up a good two and a half hours this morning on Chapter 1.

In terms of actual text, it’s only 1700 words, and about 200 of them were written ages ago when I was playing with a metaphor linking the consumption of a paracetamol tablet with my lifelong loyalty to that particular form of analgesic. But it’s a start, and the beginning of anything is always the hardest bit (I have this terrible habit of thinking about things for ages, like mending a fence, and only actually doing it when I have completely put it out of my mind and then happen to have the right tools in my hand). Writing doesn’t quite work like that, but textual flow is most definitely affected by circumstance – to wit, having an idea in my head and a keyboard at arm’s length.

The first chapter (and unlike A Matter of Scale / Time’s Up! I will be writing this in order) is called “Shake Yourself From Sleep”. It covers the basic idea of cultural brainwashing, how it affects us, and the tools it uses to keep us there. In many ways it’s a rewrite of Chapter 13 of AMOS/TU!, also including a bit about connection and disconnection, so should be easy to construct given I have also written a few essays subsequently; but it’s harder than that as I have to make assumptions about how much the reader knows about connection and disconnection. With, at a rought estimate, between 5,000 and 10,000 people having read my previous book, I’m not exactly going to get an army of Underminers just by relying on a loyal following; so going over old ground is essential. Maybe the Introduction will be more important than I first realised.

Now to find out how far the chickens have got…