releasing romance My way to heal

Just another draft extract from my memoir, that I've just written, going off on a little tangent. Tangents are my thing, so I can't avoid them completely. I decided to share it here, just in case it doesn't make the final cull (for practicalities of book length). It's an unconventional love story.

Summer Romance, acrylics on canvas by Xanthe Wyse

healing with improvising

Draft extract:

    Writing this book is probably the most romantic thing I have ever done, since letting my feelings out into the universe as the ‘stalker’ account I’d made especially for Maxwell (he responded that he saw it).
    Anyone who knows me will know that I’m not a demonstratively romantic nor touchy-feely person. Indeed, one of my friends who has known me for decades, visited my solo exhibition and said ‘Summer Romance? Since when have you been romantic?’ She was looking at the painting of water and a beach.
    ‘That was just improvising a rowboat over some dog poop rocks,’ I said. 'So, I decided to add some little people too, to tell a story.'
    ‘Oh, we’ve all had dog poop rocks,’ joked an artist who'd given me some painting tuition. I'd painted that painting with her. She'd given some tips but I'd still made my own creative decisions. She'd called me a 'jewel painter' with my colour choices.
   The thing with art, we can transform it. Highlight bits, conceal bits, express mood, add interacting layers, tell our own stories. That’s how we heal.
     My books are paintings with words. I don't aim to paint a pretty picture. I aim to express. Plus with this book, I hope to entertain. I don't have any control over how others feel about my art (love it or hate it). The freedom comes with improvising it, not trying to be perfect. I expect I will have broken rules of grammar. Rules can stifle creativity.
    My cut-up paintings still tell stories, when recombined. Writing books for me involves creating, cutting up, moving stuff around, making notes, cutting bits out, adding fresh parts in. It's the exact same creative process as visual arts, only more cognitively demanding. As words need to be in reasonable order to try to be understood.
     Indeed, some of the stupid reasons I was denied compensation for PTSD was because I paint and wrote a book.
  

Romantic Iconoclast

The screenshot below from the 'stalker account' is also linked to my previous blog post. I will give the full context in my memoir, called Bipolar Courage: are you sure you're not autistic? 

I am currently writing the final few chapters. I'll need to dive back into my journals to refresh my memory about what I want to write. I only journal now to capture stuff that I might use later. I'm aiming to self-publish it by September 2023.

Creative expression is my passion.