The Quickening

Hallelujah! I’ve jumped the first hurdle or taken the first step…

I have today, sent the first draft of my book to my publisher. (That sounds so grand, doesn’t it). It’s the first step in the publishing process, but certainly not the first step in the whole book-writing process.

I always read the Acknowledgements in every book I read and it amazes me how much is involved in the birthing of a book.

Like so many others, I had been ‘writing a book’ for a very long time, but somehow I never got past that certain point. I can’t describe what that point is, but I kept rewriting the same stuff over and over again, but in different forms. In a nutshell, I was getting nowhere and the book was lifeless.

Early this year whilst I was exhibiting at a Mind Body Spirit event, a publisher came by and we chatted and the result was she said ‘send me what you’ve written and I’ll look at it’. What I’d written (and rewritten) was less than a third of a book, with no life!

I came home in excited shock; but not knowing how to go about writing more. My familiar stumbling block loomed large. Opportunity had knocked and I didn’t know how to answer.

I make tea; did some not very inspiring mind mapping; got some more tea; put on some soothing music and started to type. I’ve always expected the words to just flow through me as if I was taking dictation. Well they didn’t! And they never have done. But my ideas did flow and I just typed.

If you have been pregnant (or are close to someone who’s been pregnant) you’ll know that during the fourth month there is the slight fluttering and ‘Quickening’ happens. The child’s heart begins to beat. It is such a soft, gentle flutter that you can miss it.

Unbeknownst to me, the same happened with my book – it just suddenly seemed to have a life of its own. Looking back over the last six or eight weeks it’s almost as if the heart of the book started to beat without me noticing.

I happily type and edited and typed some more. I have enjoyed watching it’s unfolding. Instead of being the stress and strain that I had faced with the early writing, it now just seemed to flow where it was going, in the most natural way.

And here’s the philosophy – there’s always philosophy isn’t there? The philosophy of this story is: my intention was to write a book. I’d reached as far as I’d always reach and when I went back to it, without me noticing, it ‘quickened’. It was as if I’d got out of my own way and its small heart began to beat and the book unfolded naturally.

I’ve decided that this is how all manifestation should come to pass: elegantly, without stress or strain and in just the right form, and with the excited contentment I now feel.