Monday

I did a rough calculation of how many words I have written for my book on training to be a counsellor, it comes to around 35,000, with my target being 60,000. It is a moment to stop and be pleased with myself, otherwise I will just flog myself for not having written more.

My ruse of pretending I'm not writing a book, and writing about what comes on a particular day, instead of getting too bogged down with the sequence of what I am doing, has worked, it seems. Usually I am much more ordered. Though I take comfort from Patrick Gale who said in an interview that he did not know what order the chapters from his novel Notes from an Exhibition would go in until he went to see his editor. He said that between them they literally "hung" the chapters in a pattern, as if the texts were themselves pictures being collected together to be shown.

I have not sorted the issue of how/whether to reveal some of the most personal aspects of my training. I am writing about them, but, for the moment, only as veiled portraits.