I have been involved in personal development since 1980 and during this time I have mostly been involved in writing articles and producing CDs and DVDs. In the last two years a number of professional colleagues have encouraged me to formally write a book. This main book on Provocative Change Works is a major undertaking currently standing at 90,000 words. The chapters include first meeting Frank Farrelly, the evolution of the PCW approach, practical considerations when working with clients, bespoke exercises for dealing with specific client issues, transcripts of client sessions, explaining The Provocative Icon System among other topics. In the meantime In the meantime I am pleased that a chapter on PCW has already been published by Crown House Publishing as part of “Innovations in NLP”. This chapter is an overview of the approach and the main challenge was to explain in 4000 words the core elements of PCW. Frank Farrelly’s Provocative Therapy is the primary influence on the first stage of PCW, but there’s also a lot more to explain in the following two stages.
 
I have been both surprised and delighted at what I am learning from the writing process. I have also realised the invaluable benefits of having a great editor. At a time when self publishing is an easy option and where often people don’t have formal editors for their books, I am keen that any final publication is of the highest quality. Writing a book or a chapter for a book is a different process to writing an article. An article is essentially one specific topic, usually around 1500 to 2000 words. A book is a much larger undertaking. Over the years I have reviewed many booking including books for Crown House Publishing and when I read such articles  I really want to be engaged and am mindful about the importance of how the book “flows” as a reading experience. I’m amazed at how some books don’t pay sufficient attention to basic grammar and spelling. Part of the reason for this is that would be authors are keen publish their ideas and are not prepared to invest the time and energy in refining their ideas. I have some sympathy for such individuals as author’s often consider their work as “their baby” and find it difficult to take on constructive criticism! That aside I have deep respect for anyone who engages in this process and especially those who are producing new and creative ideas which can spark the imagination of prospective readers.

Writing really focuses the mind and one of the side effects of these projects is that they have really made me reexamine my own thinking. As an author you also have to write in a manner that maintains the reader’s attention and makes sense! Sometimes I’ll review a chapter and think “Oh my god this is dreadful, what was I thinking?” and on other occasions I’ll think “This is pretty good” A good friend of mine once made the comment “great films are never finished they just escape” and Tom Waits once commented that songs try not to be “captured.” My own experience is that good writing requires a great deal of revision and refinement and any prospective author needs to have a great deal of patience and focus. When I was staying with the Andreas’s in Boulder this year it was fascinating to speak to three published authors, all of which demonstrated a real precision in their work. My intention is to release the major book in 2012 so it finally escapes into the public domain. I’m already thinking about the follow up and continue to be frustrated, delighted and genuinely surprised by the whole writing process