BIPOLAR DISORDER:
A Personal Analysis of My Chaos Narrative
A Longitudinal Context: October 1943 To May 2010
10th Edition
By
Ron Price of George Town Tasmania Australia
(140 Pages: Font 14—55,000 words)
1. Preamble and Introduction:
1.1 This is a small book. Ten years ago it started out as a brief essay and it is now an appendix to my memoirs, a five volume 2600 page opus found in whole and in part at various places on the internet. Both this small book and my memoirs could benefit from the assistance of one, Rob Cowley, affectionately known in publishing circles back in the seventies and early eighties as “the Boston slasher.” His editing was regarded in some circles as constructive and deeply sensitive. If he could amputate several dozen pages, several thousand words, of this exploration of my life experience of bipolar disorder(BPD) with minimal agony to my emotional equipment I’m sure readers would be the beneficiaries. But, alas, I think Bob is dead.
---------MY EXPERIENCE IS RELEVANT TO NURSES------------------
But I won't place any more of my story here until interest is shown.-Ron
I did find an editor, a proofreader and friend who did not slash and burn but left my soul quite intact as he waded through my labyrinthine passages, smoothed them all out and excised undesirable elements. But this editor is in the late evening of his life and, after editing several hundred pages of my writing, he has tired of the exercise and so I am left on my own. I have begun to assume the role that Cowley exercised so well in life as the Boston slasher, but it is a difficult and relentless role and I, therefore, only take it up sporadically given the quantity of my writing which requires editing. Without my editor friend, I advise readers not to hold their breath waiting for me to do what is a necessary edit in this now lengthy work.
1.1.1 John Kenneth Galbraith, the famous economist and a fine writer, had some helpful comments for writers like myself. So, too, did Galbraith’s first editor Henry Luce, the founder of Time Magazine. Both Luce and Galbraith were an ace at helping a writer avoid excess. Galbraith saw this capacity to be succinct as a basic part of good writing. Galbraith also emphasized the music of the words and the need to go through many drafts. I've always admired Galbraith, a man helped me understand the mystery that is economics. He only recently passed away. I’ve followed his advice on the need to go through endless drafts. I’ve lost count of the changes, the additions and the deletions to this text, but I know I have not avoided excess or repetition among other writing weaknesses that readers will find in the following pages. In some ways I have found that the more drafts I do, the more I have had to say. Excess is one of the qualities of my life, it seems to me, as I muse over seven decades of living, if I may begin the confessional aspect of this work in a minor key.
