The Writing and the Thinking

I’ve just about finished writing Accomplice To Evil:  Iran and the War Against the West, which St Martin’s Press promises to publish in some number of months.  This is something like book #25, and, like a woman who gets pregnant a lot, I don’t really remember writing them.  I think the metaphor is the right one;  after our first child I said to the doctor, ok, I understand why a woman would do that ONCE.  She doesn’t really know how tough it’s going to be.  But once she’s done it, why would she do it again?  And the doctor said, “it’s a biochemical thing, you’ll see;  they forget.”  Which is sort of true, but only up to a point.  And it’s true of me, too, but again, only up to a point.  I know it’s going to be a painful experience, I know I’m going to yell at myself “you idiot, you knew it was going to be terrible, why did you agree to do it?”  But I do it anyway.  And to say, as I constantly say, that it just proves that I’m a very sick person, a dedicated masochist, doesn’t really explain anything.

I have to say that, this time, it was pretty interesting, and bit less painful than the most recent ordeals.  And it reminded me of something odd about the way my mind works, namely that I don’t really know what I know, and don’t really know what I think about it, until I’ve written it down.  The writing compels me to work through it all, and tell myself what it means.  I mean, what I think it means.  And it’s fascinating because I discover that I know things I hadn’t realized that I knew.  And it forces me to go elsewhere to see what other people think, which I probably wouldn’t do unless I had to explain why I think it.

So maybe there’s a method to the madness.  I hope.