I really slept in late this morning. By late, I mean well past 12:00–noon. But then, I was up well past 2:00am finishing two more chapters in my book. Many 2s and wells there. Synchronicity?
Once I am writing “in the zone” it’s difficult to break my concentration and stop typing.
“Leave the rest for tomorrow,” is not in my vocabulary. By mid-chapter, I am driven. Forget food and water.
I’m quite content in my self-inflicted jail cell.
This driven feeling is more than work ethic or time restraint. It is emotionally based. Painful memories must be dragged out of hibernation, (often kicking and screaming,) from behind locked mental doors, convert them into word and sew them to page before they can snap back into the dark bowels of my mind like a bungee cord. It is much like reluctantly remembering a nightmare months after having had it–a struggle on many levels.
So why would I inflict such masochism on myself?
How does that saying go? “Those who forget the past are destined to repeat it.” Your journal can become the skeleton for your book. My notes from my first battle with breast cancer helped me live through stage 4 the second time. Those journals and memories became my emotionally packed book.
My story is unconventional, but not unique.
Doctors are human. Scientific tests are only as accurate as the people who perform and read them. Life is not infallible. But Inner-guidance from dreams validated in the waking world just might be.
My second book is more than halfway complete because I have my own style of cutting out my literary pattern and sewing it together with a running stitch that can be removed to make adjustments.
I write the beginning and ending of my book–then fill in the middle.
By using this technique, I always know where I am and where I’m going with a story that is filled with impassioned twists and turns. It gives me a mental edge–no floundering around in the dark while retrieving dark memories. I never feel like I have wandered off the books path. Rather than holding one tread of the story’s line in my mind, I have two. This extra balance anchors my writing so I can interject humor yet not wander away from the serious nature of the main theme.
Writing a book is much like sewing a garment.
Somewhere between the beginning and the end product, areas no longer fit. Some seams must be let out, others taken in, and extra material trimmed.
But, I always save my scraps because they could be the collar of another adventure.
Kathleen (Kat) O’Keefe-Kanavos is a TV/Radio Producer/Host of Wicked Housewives On Cape Cod™ and Author/Lecturer of the International award winning bestseller, Surviving Cancerland: Intuitive Aspects of Healing which promotes patient advocacy and connecting with inner guidance for success in health, wealth, and love, contributing author to Chicken Soup for the Soul: Dreams & Premonitions, PATHEOS Blogger and Columnist to Women Voices Magazine: SOUL and HOME, Kat taught Special Education and Psychology. She has been featured in newspapers, on CBS News, in American Express Open, and published in medical journals. Learn more @ www.AccessYourInnerGuide.com
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