March Reflections
Podcast recommendations, inspiring teachers and their current courses, plus book proposal update.
READING
As you know, I am more than a little excited to be writing my first book proposal, which in fact turns out to be more like writing a business plan! It involves a good deal of market research into the kinds of books that mine might one day sit alongside, which gives rise to alternating waves of imposter-syndrome and can-do spirit. It has also put a bit of a strain on my book budget - if I had one!
Seriously, to keep an eye on spending I have discovered the joy of the Internet Archive which works like a library. I’ve been able to borrow and peruse books before deciding whether to buy and, they have some interesting out-of-print publications where I have been unsurprisingly, easily distracted. Another useful database is Google Books. Many of their items have sample pages including the blurb you find on the back cover, an index, the introduction, and some sample pages, all features which have helped trim my to-buy list. Finally, I’ve discovered the Kindle App and how useful it is again for receiving sample pages before buying and when I have made a purchase I can highlight text and add marginalia wherever I am as the app synchronises across all my devices. Very handy.
Books I did get around to buying and have enjoyed are: Becoming The Body by Ken Michaels, Returning Home to Our Bodies by Abigail Rose Clarke, and Bodyfulness by Christine Caldwell.
By the way, you can find handy lists of my monthly prose and poetry picks on Field Notes Recommends, my affiliate space on Bookshop.org which supports independent booksellers across the UK.
I do take heart that I have two published chapters in circulation, one in The Fluid Nature of Being, edited by Linda Hartley, and the other in The Yoga Teacher’s Survival Guide, edited by Theo Wildcroft and Harriet McAtee. I’ve also created a mock cover of my own book to keep me inspired, which was a fun thing to do in Canva.
Outside of body-based books, I’ve been continuing my slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall although I got really behind from mid-February. Some focused quiet time on this Easter weekend (I felt unexpectedly poorly for a couple of days) has me happily back on track with other “Wolf Crawlers” and the schedule organised by
in his publication: Footnotes and Tangents. I’m also off to see the Holbein collection very soon.It was the concept of close reading that inspired my own planned read-along of selected extracts of Body Stories (Andrea Olsen). I’ve called the project “Bones: Anatomy, Metaphor & Meaning” and we will work through 15 selected chapters from April to July with guided practices and creative journaling prompts. You can keep pace with me or plod/race along at your own pace; it’s all recorded with a live FB group if you’d like. Take a look at the info on my website and use a coupon code EASTER to receive a chunky discount.