The art of getting away with it ... whatever IT is
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Check free and specials, below ... How to steal books and get away with it! How I stole stories Settle in for a true story of theft, if you like. The story starts in 1993 when I was made redundant for the fourth time from a career I hated. Because I believed I couldn’t do anything else, I converted our fifth bedroom into a beautiful office, ready to receive my accounting clients. I should have been thrilled with my new state of selfemployment but that stunning home addition simply mocked me, reminding me what a failure I’d become, pushing me deeper into what I loathed, with no prospect of anyone saving me from drowning. At the same time, I realised I couldn’t stay married as the tectonic plates of our beliefs and attitudes had drifted so far apart as to never join again. I knew I needed to walk (or stumble) away from the home we pretended was okay and the job I pretended I liked. I was terrified of the void I saw in my future and depressed to the point of not actually knowing just how depressed I was. I called out to an insolent, deaf God a hundred times and, eventually, met a hippy-like chap who was to be running a silent meditation retreat in a few weeks’ time. I immediately booked and paid for it, knowing absolutely about meditation.
Fortnightly Newsletter - Philip J Bradbury My wife was livid: “Paying all that money to just sit around and do nothing!” But, something inside told me I needed to do it. It felt like I had the big, caring hand of God at my back and, after the three-day retreat, I committed to
meditating for twenty minutes, morning and evening, for a month. My wife was angry again. Perhaps she realised I’d become someone who was nothing like the Philip she married. The hand of God kept pushing me and I did it. Some time in the second week a sentence started buzzing round in my mind and it wouldn’t go away, like an unwelcome tune. Eventually, I wrote the sentence on a piece of paper, hoping that it’d go away. However, as soon as I wrote it down, the rest of its family turned up. Another sentence. Write it down. Another sentence. Write it down. Another sentence … My morning routine soon evolved into less meditation and more writing as the story laid itself before me. So, I’d write and toss another loose sheet into the bottom drawer, soon filling up. Months later, I told a friend, David[1], and he told me it was my life story. “How do you know? Are you psychic?” I asked. “Every writer needs to write their story for its therapy value and because it provides juice for everything else you’ll write,” he said. I returned home and spent several hours reading and sorting the pile of loose paper and it was about a George Sanderson[2] but, really, it was my story. I hadn’t “listened” to the story I’d been writing, just focusing on keeping my pen moving in rhythm to the words pouring through my mind.
Fortnightly Newsletter - Philip J Bradbury I’ve been doing that for 30 years, now – turning up to the blank page and stealing stories from wherever they come from. They’re not mine and I don’t think them up. I just open my mind, set my pen hovering over the clean, white paper and say, “I’m ready.” I have found that there are thousands of stories floating in the ethers, wishing to be siphoned down and laid out for people to read and enjoy. I’ve transcribed (not written) over 1,000 stories – from 10 words to 115,000 words – and I’m sure I’ll transcribe another 1,000 before I lay me pen down to rest.
So, dear reader, wishing to be a writer, stop saying you can’t write. Stop thinking and give yourself to God, your muses or whatever you call them. I call them My Whispering Teachers. Stop thinking. Stop judging. Stop the self-flagellation. Get out of your own way and steal a story today. And another one tomorrow and so on – they’re all there if you choose to tune into the frequency of the void and steal another … and another and another. Try it, you’ll love it! [1] David Gaughan, whose book, The Blue Star, I published the following year. [2] I use that name for a British policeman in The Last Stand Down.
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Fortnightly Newsletter - Philip J Bradbury
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Philip J Bradbury 11/26 The Esplanade, PARADISE POINT Australia
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