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Basic Text Project News: June 2004 In the interest of keeping members informed about progress on all conference-approved projects, updates will be regularly posted to our website. You can find those updates here: www.na.org/conference or you can click on the “World Service Conference” link on the front page of our site. News about the Basic Text project will be posted online throughout the conference cycle. Of course, we will continue to report on projects in NAWS News, and there will be news of the Basic Text project in The NA Way as well. We are scheduled to frame the work on the Basic Text from now until the end of the year. What this means is that we are not yet actively soliciting stories. Of course, members can submit stories now, but after we frame the project, we will communicate clearly what we are looking for. In the meantime, what would be the most helpful is for members to provide us with ideas about what they would like to see in a revised personal stories section of the Basic Text. Because we hope to be finished framing the project by the end of the year, any input you can send to us by the end of November 2004 will be most useful. Currently, the most information about our decisions to date is in the essay in the Conference Agenda Report about Motion #4 (excerpts from the essay are attached). The initial timeline for the project approved at the 2004 conference is:
Many have asked about a sign-up list for the project. Because updates will be posted to the web and published in NAWS News, we are not collecting a mailing list specifically for this purpose. The review and input period for the project will not be until the 2006-2008 conference cycle—currently, we are projecting September 2006 through March 2007. Review and input will be open to all who sign up, but we are not currently collecting names and addresses since it is so far in the future. Excerpted from the 2004 Conference Agenda Report. For more information, click here Basic Text In the past, revising the Basic Text has been a source of much tension and controversy. We hope this project can depart from that history to be a positive experience for our fellowship as a whole, and that we can work together to realize the ideal in our vision that “NA communities worldwide and NA world services work together in a spirit of unity and cooperation to carry our message of recovery.” .... We are recommending a revision to the personal stories, not only because of these issues of consistency throughout the text, but perhaps even more significantly because we would like to see a collection of personal stories that more truly reflects the rich diversity in our fellowship today. The introduction to our Basic Text explains that the book is “the shared experience of the Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous,” and we make this recommendation with that in mind. .... In the interests of capturing that diversity, we are recommending a revision that would include personal stories from members around the globe. The revision may include replacing some or all of the personal stories that currently appear in the Basic Text, depending on the new stories submitted. We would evaluate all of the stories—the current as well as the newly submitted—for potential publication at the same time. Another significant departure from the current personal stories is that every story would not need to have the same structure: how it was, what happened, and how it is now. Some stories could be structured in this way, while others could perhaps concentrate on specific events or principles. Some could begin after the writer had been clean for a while, while others might focus on finding recovery. In short, the structure of the individual stories could vary, depending on what experiences the fellowship wants to focus on through this part of the Basic Text. We envision that the length of the personal stories section of the Basic Text would remain approximately the same as in the current edition; however, we see some sort of organizing principle as an important element of a revision. The revised personal stories would include thumbnail descriptions and/or identifying titles to indicate some of the content of the experience covered. In addition to these titles or abstracts, collecting the stories in sections of some kind might make it easier for members to go right to the stories and experiences with which they can best identify or those that will help them the most. For example, we may propose dividing the personal stories into several sections related to phases of recovery. We have not made any decisions about the specifics of that sectioning or organization. If the fellowship wants to proceed with revising the personal stories, we will be seeking your ideas about what you would like to see in a revision and how you would like it organized. |