The anatomy of a chapter

The anatomy of a chapter is complicated, involving sensations and dimensions you may never have heard of before. But they are definitely there and they turn up when you least expect it.

The words on the cross-stitch embroidery in the featured image says Jag skriver (I write).

I was reflecting over this one early morning on my bike ride to work, wind blowing in my hair and speed boosting me with freedom.

A blob

At first glance, I thought as I whooshed past an early dog walker, a chapter is just a large and shapleless monstrosity. When I took Beth Kempton’s Book proposal Masterclass we initially referred to the proposal as a blob that we poked from different angles to shape the proposal. To me, a chapter is also a monstrous blob, an entity with shape and no shape, a mass and no mass, and an inner world that won’t reveal itselves unless I work for it.

The blob structure

I have no idea how to approach the chapter blob, so I do the most obvious, I poke it. Once, to see what happens. Perhaps it responds and leaves a little feedback, and a dimple in the surface. Once again I poke, from another angle, with a new response. I keep poking, and the more I poke the blob, the more dimples linger on the surface. All of a sudden, all the dimples are connected, revealing a web, an outer structure. Some call this a disposition, but what do they know? I’m convinced the technical term is blob structure. It works kind of like a blueprint of a building, but it won’t reveal who lives inside.

The sea weed and tingle rooms

Iit’s time to go beneath the surface and see what the blob is made of. It turns out, it’s everything I never dreamed of, Mary Poppins’ bag, the room of requirement and Alice’s Wonderland all at the same time.

There are rooms in the blob, which I need to find, enter and move between to understand. The thing is, the rooms can be made of just about anything – cushiony moss, seaweed, angry ducklings or that tingle you feel when your feet are asleep. I need to figure out how to get into the rooms and how to move about in them. Perhaps cuddle the ducklings underneath their beaks, make a swing for the moss or paint the seaweed’s toes with sparkling nailpolish. I may need to enter the rooms backwards, sideways or walking on my hands.

The common thread

All the rooms are connected by a common thread. If I don’t find the common thread I will never get out of the blob. Just to make things even more challenging, sometimes I find more doors than I actually need. That’s when it’s time to decide which doors will get me to the next room and which are just dead ends.

When I have discovered and made sense of all the rooms, found the common thread and come out of the blob alive, it’s time to celebrate, I made it! I am most definitely exhausted, wrung out like a dish rag and, frankly, a bit tired of seaweed, but nevertheless a star! My grand prize is another blob to discover, only it has a completely different structure from the last one. I need to get back to poking again. I wonder what the rooms are made of in this one.

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When I arrived at the office bike room I realized that I hadn’t felt the cold and I couldn’t remember what I had seen along the way, I had been exploring the anatomy of a chapter and writing this blog post in my mind since I started pedaling. I had literally written myself to work and my body felt utterly relaxed and balanced.

This past week I stayed in a tiny house on my solo writing retreat. I will tell you more about it in an upcoming blog post!

Happy spinning!

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