It starts with a sentence ..

What do I know about writing a book?

It is as an audacious goal - writing a book. Especially an auto-biography. Who am I to think the story of my life thus far would be interesting or meaningful to anyone other than myself? Is this just me following some narcissistic delusion? Will this just turn into a flight of fancy that fades away over the following weeks and months?

I certainly hope not. When I look back on my life and the multiple traumatic and dramatic events that have transpired, many that occurred privately and that I have never shared with others, outside a therapist, it occurs to me maybe there is a story to tell? Perhaps in sharing this with others not only will it be healing for me, but more importantly others may benefit from this as well. Those readers who have had similar experiences as my own, or can potentially relate to what I share. Maybe someone else on a spiritual journey may find an insight or two that help them further down their path ?

Trying to be objective as I can, it really seems quite incredible that I am leading the life I am today considering the myriad of things that could have gone horribly wrong at many points in time. It feels like a story of hope and redemption. Will others see it that way?

The second nagging doubt that comes to mind is what do I know about writing? Outside of a few long form business and technical articles, the last creative writing I did was nearly four decades ago in junior high school.

My life thus far has been a series of passions from athletic endeavors like surfing, motorcycle racing, barefoot running to more creative callings like sculpture, glass blowing, and landscaping, and then the many hobbies from building RC cars to growing Peruvian peppers. I develop a passion (some of my friends might say obsession) and endeavor to master whatever it is that interests me. Researching, thinking, problem solving, and most importantly - doing. Learning new things and then developing proficiency in those interests is incredibly fulfilling to me.

I see writing as being no different. As I mentioned previously, all my writing over the last several decades has been focused on business and technology. Not creative, and never very inspiring internally - more of a tough slog. A few of my articles have been well received and published in various books and used in University - but they never felt joyful to write, just work. I want to approach this differently, more as an artist and from a place of wonder and joy.

I am seeing this adventure as a means to developing a new skill in the craft of writing. Painting pictures, feelings, and imagination with words. Can I write in a way that imparts my physical, emotional, and spiritual state to the reader? Much like dolphins are able to use their echolocation to communicate a visceral 3 dimensional scene of what they are observing to other dolphins, as if the other dolphin is directly observing the same scene themselves (did you know they can do that?). Can I craft my prose to do something similar? Connect with the audience at a visceral level? Have them see and feel what I felt?

Once again, this is feeling pretty audacious and perhaps arrogant to think I can achieve this - to achieve a significant level of mastery at something I have never tried before. But, I am going to give it a shot.

To help accelerate my learning of this new craft, I signed up for Master Class - a series of professionally produced online teaching courses by masters of their trade from famous chefs to professional basketball players - and of course writers. I immediately started a course by Salman Rushdie, and on my morning walks with the dogs, when I normally listen to long-form podcasts, I started listening to Salman Rushdie. It has been both informative and inspiring and is giving me a finer appreciation of writing as an art form. Something I can aspire to.

One of my first take-aways from listening to Mr. Rushdie is not to try too hard - don’t make it heavy handed. Be descriptive, but not flowery. Enough detail, but not too much. The other big take-away (which I already had an intuition about and am doing naturally) is to revise, revise, revise. I first start with just a flow of thought to capture it on paper, like a sculptor throwing together large masses of clay to form a rough shape, and then progressively refining and adjusting to get the form and feel just right. My hope is I can pull this off without it appearing amateurish or just plain bad.

"Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."

Blaise Pascal - 1657

A quote that comes to mind is from Blaise Pascal (although often misattributed to Mark Twain.) Crudely translated it says “If I had more time I would have written you a shorter letter”. I see writing much the same way, what makes writing good may be more about what you remove than what you add.

So here goes, the first paragraph of the preface. The main sentence structures flowed out quickly and over the last few days as I revisit the paragraph I have revised it a dozen or more times. It is getting closer, but doesn’t feel quite there.

I am attempting an allegory here, hopefully it isn’t too heavy handed. But the true life story of me surfing while on LSD serves as an allegory for the spiritual journey that follows. I try to set that stage in the first five sentences. Let me know what you think. Kind criticism is helpful here. I don’t really know what I am doing - so please let me know what works and what doesn’t.

Preface - Surfing on Acid

Waves of prismatic color and light danced over my arms as the effervescent trail of air bubbles streamed down from the tip of my surfboard to where I gripped its sides.  I thrust myself deeper into the sea, pushing my board down and forward in a powerful arc just under the turbulence of the breaking wave surging overhead.  Time was slowing down.  Just a few hours earlier, in the twilight of the morning, I had taken my second dose of LSD and I was tripping hard.  I was also paddling out at one of the most competitive and iconic surf breaks in Southern California - Lower Trestles.   A place I had never surfed before.