Writing to find out what I know...

...and not to show what I know, was something that my erstwhile heroine and main protagonist, Rebecca West, claimed she did. As usual I cannot put my finger on the direct quote, but today is an exercise in writing to find out what I do actually know.

I sat down at the computer and banged out a couple of hundred words, to add to the couple of hundred sat in an ambiguous draft lurking on my desktop. I then pasted the two pieces together and hashed out a few more sentences.

It's all about breaking the curse of the blinking cursor. There is nothing more intimidating than a blank page! So I now have an exploratory sum of about 1500 words - if I can hash out another 500 print them off and try to organise the thoughts contained into something slightly more coherent than they currently stand then I am doing well. All my books are in my office so I am struggling to locate exact quotes and thoughts - I have so many of both it is like an orgy of parentheses in my head - but the idea is that in free writing I may actually come up with a nexus of ideas that eventually will form a basis for a chapter. Oh I know roughly what the chapter is about, but it's getting that on the page in such a way that I can actually be deemed worthy of a PhD place in one of the most illustrious universities in Britain ...

hmmmmmmm!