The Making of Chatterton: A Self of My Own is a journal which records my reflections on the process of writing the novella, Chatterton: A Self of My Own. I am involved in a novel-writing project in which I am exploring the novel-form as a means of expression. A novel is the working out, in detail, of one idea. It is a structured idea-pattern which conveys meaning through the arrangement of imagery. The combination of simplicity and complexity that the implications of one seminal idea demands leads to the planning, writing, editing and polishing of a many-thousand word text. In order to make each novel as good as it can possibly be, I have attempted to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggests the topic of a novel is expanded into a complex web of supporting ideas.

In the interests of economy and productivity, I have striven to find the ideal balance between my creative urges and my critical insights as a novelist. In pursuit of the conscious knowledge of an essentially unconscious process, I have sought to articulate the basic underlying principles by which I am seeking to order the disparate elements that cluster around the original idea of the novel.

The Making of Chatterton: A Self of My Own

is available as a free download.

Copies of the journals may be downloaded and printed for personal use. The journals are copyrighted and are not to be copied for distribution or circulation by any means. Short quotations may be cited for review purposes or as attributed references in other works.