Thoughts on writing my books

I often ask myself why I started writing about my calling as a five element acupuncturist all those years ago.  I had apparently spent half my life with no inclination to write anything which was not connected first to my studies and then to whatever work I was doing.  I didn’t lift a pen to write about myself until one day I found myself writing about my first encounter with acupuncture and the effect my first five element treatment had had upon me.   Since then, some 40 years later, my pen has never been out of my hand.

 

I have to use a good old-fashioned fountain pen to write with, but oddly, even to me, I never write my first draft at home.  I can only write sitting inside or outside some café, with a cup of espresso coffee beside me and surrounded by people.  It is as though in some way I need to remain connected to other human beings as I write my thoughts about how the elements are reflected in them.  This is how I seem to be able to stimulate my thoughts.  In the pauses between writing, I look around and study my companions, observing closely their interactions or their lack of interaction with one another.  These observations move my thoughts in new directions even as I write. I then take my handwritten notes home with me to be worked on and edited on my word-processor, and sometimes to be deleted totally if they do not now represent what I want to say. 

 

I have been prompted to think about this writing procedure of mine by receiving an email from China yesterday, which listed the total number of my seven books in Mandarin published in the past 15 or so years of my visits there.  This comes to the surprising total of about 150,000 books sold.  I find this a very heart-warming testament to China's growing interest in five element acupuncture as representing a traditional medical discipline still as currently valid as it was when it first appeared there a few thousand years ago.