Episode 2 is up: how the material for the book started as drawings I made in psychiatric hospital, entirely for myself.
The nurses had taken away anything I might use to harm myself, but they left me pens and paper. So I drew what was around me, and what was happening to me – including a picture of a man who had recently started wearing glasses, being admitted to psychiatric hospital.
None of it was made to be shown. It was made to keep me steady. Years later, that same material became A Speccy Man Has a Breakdown.
If you’re thinking about writing memoir – or teaching, or coaching, or any work that draws on lived experience – the starting point I’d suggest is this: make things just for yourself first. Notes, drawings, fragments. The question of what to do with them can come much later, or never. The material has to exist first.
Episode 2: Instagram | LinkedIn
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