Nothingness and potential

Last week we began “tripping the dialectic fantastic” with a consideration of existence and essence; a couplet made explicit through Sartre’s famous expression “existence precedes essence”. This weeks couplet is also inspired by Sartre, as we will see in the following text from a first drafting of my second book*: for Sartre, the lack of …

Existence and essence

Finding a little more freefall after a period of stuckness, I am engaging with my writing with much enjoyment. I am getting in a pattern of “Monday-for-Friday”: reflection and research on Mondays, bringing my ideas onto the page on Friday. Already I feel I am introducing the theme of this post – as the creative …

The next chapter

Easter, and Spring more generally, is a time of renewal and beginnings. As I sit here in my beloved Normandy overlooking the crabapple and magnolia blossom, I see life coming back to life. Five years ago, pretty much to the day, I drafted a table of contents for my first book; a year ago, pretty …

You’ve got a friend

This past week, I have been spending some time gathering my thoughts and resources ahead of a writing retreat over the Easter break. I have been working on a research project since last autumn, and having now analysed the interview data, I am ready to start preparing the research article…or so I thought. I had …