I am much happier now. As I enter the second half of the manuscript for my book on counselling drug users the last two weeks have been frustrating to say the least.
I have never had to produce documents of this size and for this purpose before so I did not know how I would do it. But I am discovering I am doing this second book the same way as I did the first. I am not a systematic writer at all. I have a general idea of what is going to be covered, after all I did have to produce a book proposal that included a statement of the titles of the chapters for the publisher.
Fortunately last time they allowed me to modify that a bit as I went along and I am doing the same again. I definitely do not have a very clear idea of what I am going to write. I make it up as I go along in the general areas that I have decided on.
I kind of start at chapter one and move through the chapters but often I am doing them out of order. It depends what comes to my mind on any particular day. I walk pretty well every day as exercise and often when I am walking I get the best ideas coming up. So when I get home it is straight onto the word processor and putting down the ideas, at least in note form.
I have a current supervisee who has to do this project that is basically a small thesis. About a month ago she made a contract in her supervision that she would do ‘x’ amount of words, ‘x’ number of days per week. When she made it I thought, there is no way this is going to work, but it has worked well and she is getting it all done. Obviously I projected onto her because there is no way I could write like that.
However back to me being happier today. In the past two weeks my thoughts have been jumping between three separate chapters all at once. Counselling the teenage drug user, the Transactional Analysis theory of addiction and self soothing and the drug user. A common feature of the problematic drug user is an inability to self soothe. This jumping around has left me feeling like I am not getting anywhere and hence the frustration.
Kahless
However today I concluded two of the three chapters, the teenage one and the theory of addiction one and that is why I am back to being a happy little chappy again. And I will be doing the self soothing one this week which is a little bit more focussed, well I hope it remains that way!
Graffiti
