Why I’ve been missing | Autism Dreaming

Since last fall, all winter and this spring, I haven’t been on this site much.

The problem is that I conceived a new book.

In his autobiography The Words, the novelist Jean Paul Sartre declared that anyone can write a book, giving as an example one he wrote when he was 6 years old. He meant something like the Chinese saying that a thousand mile journey begins with a single step. You only need to write one sentence and you’re on your way. Keep going and you’ll eventually have a book.

The problem for many new writers is that first sentence. They contemplate it as if they’re faced with building an Empire State building with their bare hands, a gigantic tower of words. But having written four books, with several others ongoing, I long ago overcame that problem. As soon as I recognize a new book, I start writing.

But when you write enthusiastically, there’s a tendency to go off on tangents, exploring every side path, sometimes getting lost. When you do this almost every day, the problems build. Looking today at what I’ve done over the past 6 months, I’m a bit overwhelmed – not so much by what remains undone, but by what has been done.

My tower of words is there, with all the floors it needs, maybe too many. But the chapters don’t agree with each other which floor they belong on – and two thirds of them are in a shambles, not because of lack of work on them, but because of too much.

I have weaknesses that other writers don’t talk about. For example, I can write about something several times, in different places, without realizing it.These aren’t clones of each other. Each one is a bit different, and each one insists that it is the real one. Somehow they have to be integrated with each other, which I know from past experience is going to be a lot of work.

Then, because this is partly a book about dreams, there are two dreams from my  journals, spectacular dreams that cry out to be in a book, that are floating up and down through the floors of the tower, unable to find a place to land.

This isn’t a review problem, by the way. That’s the part of writing I like best. I’m more like a painter who enjoys something more the longer they work on it. The sculptor Rodin never wanted to finish his famous piece, The Gates of Hell, for this reason. A part of me wants to work on this book forever too. 

What am I writing about? Because I’ve been recording dreams for about 50 years –  there are at least 3,000 dreams in my journals – a few years ago I began puttering around with a book about dreams. But when there were over 700 books about dreams on Amazon.com alone, what chance did another one have? So I didn’t work on it much.

In the meantime, during the writing of my 2006 novel The Birdcatcher, I began to see that my solitary life – I’m a loner among loners – was best explained by the concept of autism. The Birdcatcher became my book about autism. I didn’t think I would ever write another one.

Then, one night last fall, I got an electrifying idea – a book about the dreams of autistic people.

Unfortunately, there’s almost no research on autistic dreams. But I soon saw how I could do this by means of a personal exploration of my own dreams, and the assistance of the many psychologists, psychiatrists and other thinkers who I’ve been reading all my life.

And so, for the last six months or so I’ve worked steadily on this book, which I’ve tentatively named Autism Dreaming.

I wish I could tell you when it’s likely to be finished.