It was yet another ideas day today, but the ideas were not like helium filled mylar balloons, which at any minute would be destined for the stratosphere. Rather, they were regular red-oxygen filled balloons. I need these kinds of idea days, which seem to me, sad to say, are too infrequent.

I resumed working on The Gift of a Good Ride – Ideas then came to me. I decided for right now to leave the introduction as is; although, I am going to do chapter summaries of the existent chapters, put them in the introduction, and then put the longer chapter overviews into an annotated table of contents. I instead used my other proposal (that is for When You Come to a Fork in the Road) as a template for my Credentials section since I don’t have to do hardly any changes to it. I was planning on having Part V of my proposal be the article I wrote and submitted to the Icelandic Horse Quarterly. I moved it but I am considering writing my first chapter and instead submitting it. This is composing process puttering. Put this here, put that there. No, take out what you put here and instead put it there. It is like moving one’s belongings about.

I also via email asked Mary Trafford, who is a Centered Riding instructor and the Centered Riding newsletter editor, if she might take a look at this proposal, and if need be suggest revisionary and copy editing changes. And I am going to ask Susan Harris, who is also a Centered Riding instructor, if she’d like to illustrate this book. Uh huh, lots of ideas today, but ideas which are do-able.

I haven’t talked with Pete about much of this. He knows what I’m up to because he pairs my dispatches with photos and then posts both. But he asked me at lunch, “what do you do if both proposals get accepted? My response, which took the form of a question, was, what do I do when both proposals get accepted? It is quite amazing that one word can be so reflective of one’s outlook. In thinking of If my shoulders fall forward and I look at the ground. In thinking of the word when, I stand up straight and look directly ahead of me. Thinking if, turns my focus in the direction of my inner landscape, and thinking when turns it in the direction of my outer landscape. If I do say so myself, this is an excellent example of the mind/body relationship at work.

Writing isn’t easy. So many people have told me that they have things they want to write about. And in most instances, these ideas are quite good. But few actually follow through and get their ideas on paper. In part, this is because their confidence in their ideas begins to waver. And in part this is because they fail to realize that the production of good writing takes time, time that could be spent doing other things. So they succumb to the temptation. A case in point -- I worked later than I thought I would today, and so I did not get out skiing with Pete. I felt a bit frustrated about this, that is until I reminded myself that getting these two proposals accepted isn’t a matter of if but when.

Next: 13. 1/13/18: The Writing Life: The Gift of a Good Ride