On writing

Thought you might like a little dive down the writing rabbit hole.

I wrote this morning’s chiropractic piece in 19 minutes on a bus. I timed myself just for future professional reference.

In technical terms, it’s an example of a feature piece: part portrait, part story, part personal reflection.

I didn’t decide to write it until I was on the bus. I thought I was going to look at the scenery. But it demanded my attention and then burst forth.

Like everything I write, the outline was there in my head from the outset: it took perhaps five seconds to form. Back to all that Oxford training, although maybe Oxford honed rather than fashioned that approach.

Then there are lots of unconscious choices that take place in the cerebral workshop where the writing elves hang out.

There are different ways in. If the story deals with a topic like this of general interest, we need to start broad and zoom in on the subject.

A more dramatic alternative would be to take the reader right into it, and then zoom out.

You could start “It’s only when I heard the bone crack that I knew it was going to be ok”. And then start where I started.

It’s a nice tool to have in the kit, but perhaps unnecessarily histrionic for this particular piece. Better suited to the time you escaped a stranger in a dark alley.

What you CAN’T do is begin with the rather dry description of what chiropractic does in the third paragraph. That might lead to eye-glazing.

It’s nice to include a little context: a note on the building, the light in the office. If there were not such a lovely photo of Audrey which speaks for itself, I might have added a few brushstrokes – to capture her appearance for example. In this case I restricted myself to what you couldn’t see: the multilingual aspect, and the way she practises her profession.

It could have gone more in the direction of a full professional portrait of Audrey, but in this case I decided without too much consideration, that we are talking about health first, and the person second – based merely on the fact that many people have back problems, and so this is of general interest. Still, I’ve made it quite clear too that she is no ordinary practitioner.

And now looking back on THIS post I’m scratching my head as I realise that I write in order to think. And that like novelists who claim to be sometimes astounded by their own characters, I am actually surprised by the results.

And once I was done, my edit consisted of eliminating a typo or three, then adding a handful of commas. That’s it.

It’s as if I have a brain in my fingers.

There’s certainly not much of one in my head.