A book, 25 days, and a request

I’m writing to ask for your help.

In the next 25 days I’m going to finish and publish a book – a real one, hardback, numbered, signed – and I’d love for you to follow along as I do it.

The book is called A Speccy Man Has a Breakdown. It’s the true story of how I ended up in a psychiatric hospital, hated myself – believed myself to be truly worthless – and gradually, very gradually, discovered that I have value.

I told it largely through drawings rather than words, because by that point words had become my inner critic’s voice and I needed a way out from under them. Three hundred pictures came out of me. Some dark, some full of relief.

This happened a few years ago. I’ve given talks about it, shown the pictures, and people were moved in a way I hadn’t expected. They laughed, too, which was always the intention. Now I want to make the book that those talks promised.

In the first instance, I’m publishing it myself – a limited edition, each copy numbered and signed. I’ll be making decisions in real time about what goes in, how much text, what it needs to feel like as an object. Some of those decisions will be hard. I’d like witnesses.

If you’d like to follow the process through March – the fumbling and the figuring-out as much as the finished thing – just reply to this email and say so. I’ll send roughly one email a day for the rest of the month, only to people who actively choose to receive it.

I don’t expect you respond, or even read them all. Following along is free – details about buying a copy will come later.

And if any of this resonates with someone you know, I’d love it if you passed it on.