Welcome to justthoughtsnstuff

I started posting to jtns on 20 February 2010 with just one word, 'Mosaic'. This seemed an appropriate introduction to a blog that would juxtapose fragments of memoir and life-writing. Since 1996, I'd been coming to terms with the consequences of emotional and economic abuse that had begun in childhood, and which, amongst other things, had sought to stifle self-expression. While I'd explored some aspects of my life through fiction and, to a lesser extent, journalism, it was only in 2010 that I felt confident enough to write openly about myself. I believed this was an important part of the healing process. Yet within weeks, the final scenes of my family's fifty-year nightmare started to play themselves out and the purpose of the blog became one of survival through writing. Although some posts are about my family's suffering - most explicitly, Life-Writing Talk, with Reference to Trust: A family story - the majority are about happier subjects (including, Bampton in rural west Oxfordshire, where I live, Oxford, where I work, the seasons and the countryside, walking and cycling) and I hope that these, together with their accompanying photos, are enjoyable and positive. Note: In February 2020, on jtns' tenth birthday, I stopped posting to this blog. It is now a contained work of life-writing about ten years of my life. Frank, 21 February 2020.

New blog: morethoughtsnstuff.com.

Thursday 17 February 2011

ora











A copy of the uncut and unedited version of Invisible is now part of the Oxford University Research Archive (ORA).

If you want to view the file, follow the QR code above on your mobile phone or head for http://tinyurl.com/6ffu598.

The text in the archive is the self-same that I completed on the 24th April 2006. As I wrote the first draft during the preceding years, I edited what I had written each day when I got back home from working as a cataloguer at the Oxford Union Library. The original material would be typed into a Sharp organiser (most of the first draft) or an HTC Vario (the last couple of chapters) while I travelled on the 18 Bampton to Oxford bus.

During 2006/07 I rewrote the whole first draft and eventually decided to cut about 10,000 words--after having discussed the typescript with Keiren Phelan of Arts Council South East and Frank Cottrell Boyce. Although I think cutting was the right choice, it's nice to have the chance to make the uncut version available.
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