This hasn’t been the best of weeks.  Wednesday I felt a cold starting to come on and it got worse.  Today is the first day I am starting to feel better and fear I’ll have to go to work tomorrow.  You’ll notice that I’ve changed my WordPress theme and I have a new picture in the header.  It was just time for a change – I’ve been using the old layout for three years and I think this new layout is cleaner.

Yes, that is me, in my hiking gear looking out over the hills were Heather and I hike.  This one was taken a couple of years ago at Russian Ridge.  I kind of like the picture.  Let me know what you think.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I am working on a book of poems, well today’s post will be short because of that book.  I’ve been working steadily at it and am now about 11 poems into it plus a couple of pages of prose.  It’s hard to describe but there are things that take on an energy of their own and require that something be done.  In my heart I am feeling an urgency to complete this work that is filling my soul.

At first I was going to just write a short book of poems and essays about my experience with prostate cancer.  As I wrote, one poem popped out of my brain about my mother and her death from pancreatic cancer. Now my little book has two parts and nearly two pages of poems titles and various outlines.

I think I can blame the whole process on a recent shift in my writing habits.  My habit had been to sit down on a Sunday afternoon and crank out an essay on whatever subject popped into my head.  In the last few months that has been harder to do as I have churned through the easy topics.  Also, I’ve found myself thinking and writing more in verse and poetry.

I wanted to make a shift so I could keep writing prose.  My solution was to allow myself more time to write and research a post.  The plan was to do some research on a Tuesday evening, write on a Thursday and post on a Sunday.  The first result of that was my three-part post on the California drought (that was supposed to be one post, but it got out of hand).

Can’t really say what exactly happened but in the last couple of weeks, I’ve shifted almost all of my writing time to my little book.  Some of the contributing factors include:

• A long-held desire to write a book
• A recent shift in my thinking of writing prose to writing free verse poetry
• A need to tell my cancer story in non-traditional way
• A reminder of the pain and sorrow around my mother’s death

Let’s just say that these plus the feeling that I need to take my writing in new directions gave me the energy to shift and do something different.  It’s not a process I fully understand but know I need to respect its calling.

I’ve no idea what direction the final work on the book will take or what it means for this little weekly blog.  It’s possible I might post a poem or two from the book instead of writing a post and it’s likely that I’ll be turning to a shorter post on Sundays so I’ll have time for the book.  But, I do find the discipline of posting every week to be valuable.

It is the discipline of regular writing that has given me the confidence that I can, through effort and persistence, write a book.

Whether or not anyone will want to read it is a topic for another day.

Till next week,
Andrew