My work in print: God works in mysterious ways

An interesting twist to the writing story: for all the pieces that I carefully write, with publication more in mind than I like to admit to myself and certainly to others, the first thing written by me that will appear in a book is a piece that I intended for myself alone and wrote determined not to show to anyone.

Without giving too much away, suffice to say that I wrote this piece grudgingly, showed it to one person alone at their explicit and repeated request, and that now it has found its way into a book due to be published shortly. My contribution, by the way, will remain anonymous. Isn’t life strange? I wrote this little piece all in one go, without going back over my lines to edit it, without any thought to an audience that I assumed would never exist. And yet, I have to admit, in many ways it a better piece of work than many others which I write with the shadow of a judgemental reader uncomfortably looming over me. And what it lacks in refinement (writing the whole thing took about fifteen minutes) it, in my opinion, makes up in substance. For here it is, at last, a piece of truth about myself: bare, undisguised.

I say undisguised because inevitably all that I write is about myself in some way, there’s no question about it. In fact, my writing is sometimes but a form of glorified fantasising, with villains in my life getting their due in stories that I take delight in crafting and me living unlikely adventures through the experiences of my characters, for whom nothing is impossible or wildly impractical. The difference is that usually only I understand the subtle connections between the stories and my fears, or my desires, only I know the true real life identities of characters that are air brushed (I hope) beyond all recognition. As for the piece due to be published, it is all me. There are no props, no lies, there is none of my usual concern with others might think. Many would be surprised, if they read it, to find that it was mine. But I suspect, not those who know me best.