The Psychonovelist (December 1st, Day one past NaNoWriMo 2011)

It would bore you if I told you, like my usual activities, I was attempting to do some research for a class paper, and then got horrendously distracted by the research information itself, and then began to think about my silly, silly NaNovel of this year. I finally wrote a last chapter that could conclude the story, if I chose to leave it that way. And oddly enough, with all the cheating (words pre-November, putting in school assignments for word count, etc.) that I did, I only arrived at 49,533 words at 12:15 this morning without the school assignments. So technically, I really lost this year. But I still got my 50,000 in last night, at least on the NaNoWriMo site's word counter.

But here's the point. I was researching for a two-page, ridiculously easy "research" paper for psychology (which is due tomorrow, and I've had way too long to do it), and I found a blog on PsychCentral.com, with a woman who has similar disorders/the exact ones as one of my fictional secondary characters in my story this year.

A note about Sunlight:

It was the most depressing thing I've ever written. I honestly think it would HARM mental health for someone to read it, now that I think about it. It's just an endless cycle of the saddest stuff I could put in a story, with just nothing but that endless cycle. There were some great, wonderfully insightful, interesting parts to it, but most of it... well... just think about those video games where you search through a room to find something creepy to jump out at you. This story was like that--but with depressing events instead of creepy or shocking.

I've spent November writing papers and speeches about mental health and mental disorders and reducing stigma. I spent my summer reading publications about reducing stigma and increasing social model usage for disability. I've spent this whole year learning more and more about these issues, doing my dang best to find this stuff published by people with firsthand experience, not just someone speaking out, and look what I've done.

I believe I've done the absolute opposite of what I intended. I wanted to write something "realistic", but not hopeless. I wanted to portray the dark and difficult sides of a combination of dark and difficult life circumstances, tragedies, trauma, and the like. I understand that, often, these things do lead to worse circumstances.

But people do live. The whole point was to make it about the living, not the dying, and I wrote the entire damn story about dying, pretty much. Sure, I spend my life trying to understand what goes on in people's heads, how a mind works in response to so many different things, and how thoughts are processed when a mind is different than other minds. I want so much to write something of power, of significance, of realism (although some argue that fiction cannot be realistic--I can respect that. I accept that.), of life. And, yes, I suppose, mortality.

But who the heck (look at my language, guys! oooo:) wants to read a story about an already "troubled" young man and his "troubled" family who dies before him, and his "troubled" but fairly well girlfriend doing normal things and him being totally incapable of facing the fact that... well, she's moving on with her life, and he's not? And he feels like he can't? Can I please, please, PLEASE, throw in those magic superhero unicorns and green space donkeys I joked about all month with my friends? The story is totally hopeless. Not because his life is, but just because... I mean, I can't even "save" my characters, let alone people in real life.

It's not about saving him, obviously. Or other people. But... I mean... with the story the way it is (and I can promise, with my whole heart, it will not FREAKING STAY THAT WAY), how on earth is this going to elicit any positive change? It'll be a trigger for those who face similar issues, it will be a horrific story for a "good cry" for the ones who can handle emotional stories and like them, and a testament to me being utterly weird and messed up.

And oddly enough:

http://www.apa.org/research/action/writing.aspx

(So I hardly have any traumatic experiences myself, but apparently it shows I have GOOD mental health, not poor. I always find that odd, because you would think it would be the other way around. But that's not so.)

Anyways, that's just my vent for today. The cool (alright, totally cheesy) title is just because that's my IDEAL self, which is currently in conflict with my REAL self. Carl Rogers, I think. Humanistic psychologist. Took up a month of my Relationships and Family class last year, got a section in my textbook.

Have a good day, everyone. Enjoy December.

Spiral

Nature vs. nurture,
natural vs. unnatural,
twist
turn
talk
talk
talk
speak
listen
ignore.
"Debate never wins a heart"
be still,
and listen listen listenlistenlisten.
truth,
or lies,
cruelty,
or harsh
reality.
"Honesty is not always the truth."
Turn off the light,
and don't look in the mirror.
Tearstained red eyes,
watched her a minute,
held a second.
Stared at the cold floor.
and but a child asks
senses
conflict.
"Out of the mouth of babes..."
you must
know
both
sides.
Twist,
turn,
talk,
speak,
listen,
ignore.
Recall.
Truth,
or lies,
harsh reality,
or cruelty.
Judge and you will be judged.
Twist, twist, turn.
Upon the sand foundation,
swallowed in the sea.
hide in the dark room,
ask,
"God, what the h--- is wrong with me?"
washrinserepeat
walk downstairs,
and
display
hypocrisy.
twist.
talk.
ask.
forget.
ignore.
recall.
Defend,
your
position.
Know
your
"enemy".
twist
twist
talk
the sandy foundation,
the crumbled home in the stormy sea.
The wave tossed
in the ocean.
Disregard,
or listen.
pin the
D or H or A or T
upon your breast,
or hide.

A poem of epic stupidity.

"Completely Unattainable"

the kind of thoughts

you never confess

execpt to the closest of those

the dangerous thoughts

that one indulges in

dangerous

dangerous,

like a strange,

dream

that makes everything

awkward.

You see them,

and those thoughts never rush

an act, an act,

of yours

of entertainment

pretend,

but these thoughts,

frivolous,

silly,

untrue.

just a second of weakness,

confession,

perhaps.

it is more

than an act.

silly silly thoughts.

It would never occur,

the thoughts that disgust and entertain you.

dangerous dangerous dangerous thoughts.

jokes more than jokes,

somewhere other than your head.

Fight, fight, fight,

this will one day,

be a good story,

for someone.

If you keep it

untrue.



The Hardest Part

Writing what I don't want to write. But what I also DO want to write. It's all a matter of being honest, even if it's uncomfortable. Of doing what I set out to do when I write about serious matters--trying to understand.

I confess now, that this (Sunlight) may be the hardest story I've ever tried to write, and maybe even the hardest story I ever will write. It deals directly with things, I admit, that I fear. As incredibly terrible as it is, it's been siginificantly easier to write about other serious topics--abuse, murder, drug use, unexpected/unplanned pregnancy, self-injury, loss of friends, running away, even suicide, all of which have made frequent appearances in my older stories and roleplays and other main original characters of mine. I guess I never really tried to go into detail--no matter how much research I did, no matter how many real-life stories I heard or read, no matter how many realistic fiction books I read, no matter how many details I received that could have created a background or a scene or a significant part of a character's life that rang true and real, I never actually did it.

I fear the things that happen in Damir and his family's life. I feel like a terrible person for it, but I do. And I fear the loss of my parents. I fear the loss of my close friends, through death or through the disintegration of a relationship, or even immense physical distance, to an extent. I fear losing this horribly priveleged place in society--the place of health, of my capability to do virtually anything with this young body I don't treat well enough. I would begin to speak in generalization, but it might be wrong. And if I'm going to paint myself honestly, I will. I am a coward. I am a prejudiced beast. I am not who I want to be, not who I wish I was, this person who genuinely cares and understands and who tries ever-so-hard to do what is right for people. I think about it and I write about it, and I try about it, and I even pray about it, but I don't DO enough. I am not active enough.
And I guess there's a part of me that fears losing my family in the same way that Damir does. Or losing my friends in such a way as he loses his. I don't wish for the changes and pain and strain and isolation that they endure. And my infinite lack of understanding causes me to write the story in such a way that it is unrealistic. He should care for his family, his parents, his friends, no matter what happens, give his entire life for them, because that is what he does as a human being who loves them. There's so much sacrifice involved, and I am not taking the time to convey that so far--moreso, I'm putting him out to be this person who is just so utterly self-centered. Who is seeking this girl to be the one who makes his life "so much better"--so much brighter. Who somehow convinces himself to take the time to spend time with her.

It makes sense, in a way, in the beginning at least. But as health starts to fail further, or even improve, from what I've found, you don't abandon family that way. The story needs to show the sacrifice, and it needs to show the frustrations, and the isolation, and the closeness. I wanted the Paxes to have their struggles even before the accident. But even so, I know, and they know, that even in spite of their previously dysfunctional nature, they still love each other.

Love is so absent from the story so far. There is so much abandonment. Damir shouldn't even just be OBSESSED with Amira--if he truly loves her, he is so grateful for her return. The bitterness he feels, it's there. But perhaps it wouldn't be so obvious yet. If he loves her, he also wants her to be making her own decisions. But he as a person, a person who is so dependent on her for his own happiness, which I personally feel may be harmful, may understandably feel that pain, that bitterness, assigned to what he considers her abandonment.

If he loved his family, he would never leave his father's side. Having the issues that the family had before, with them constantly moving for work, with his parents constantly involved socially and professionally with other people for extended periods of time, and with the emotional and mental issues which they worked so hard to keep private, that distance, it broke them further when the accident happened. But they had to come together. I'm realizing, it's not Amira who understands Damir the most--it's his parents. And he understands them the most, even if their physical limitations are further than his. They are a family.

And yet, they are seperated by death. Damir's father's relationship with his mother is supposed to reflect Amira and Damir's--so close and dependent is he upon her, that the loss of her creates such deep anguish that it diminishes his desire to improve himself, truly to continue life.
Trying to understand death, and coping with death, and the knowledge of one's terminal condition, and that of a loved one's... is something that I never wished to attempt to understand. But now, I do. I have to.

I often write for the people like myself--essentially, for myself, and readers like myself. People with little to no experience with the issues that I will write with, and yet, that is sort of missing the point. I always wrote, before, so I could understand, so I could help people as a counseling/clinical psychologist and a friend and a fellow human being. But the honest truth is, and this is so blatantly clear and obvious and idiotic that I never thought of this, in such a way, before--people DO have these experiences. I approached real people's experiences as their experiences. And their experiences helped me understand their experiences so I could convey them fictionally, but accurately.
But I, a pathetic poser of a person desiring to be an author, did not have the foresight to think of the fact that people with real life experience may read these stories. And it is they that I should be thinking of as I write. I do, and I have, previously, but only on a matter of accuracy. Accuracy, but not honesty. Accuracy, but not plain truth. Accuracy, but not emotional relation. I want, somewhat, as a writer, to create an emotional connection to my readers, I have experienced, with the serious stories which I have read. I want some resonance. I want some things to be memorable, because they caused someone to think of a situation differently. Or because I got them to think of something, consider something, see something from a different perspective. As I have had these experiences with read the stories that I have.

But there are people who write these stories better than I ever will. Because they write their own story. Because they have the experience to do so--and their story will forever be truer than any story created that I will create. Your story, reader, your story, is truer than the fiction I attempt to craft, and likely fail at doing.

There is a weight, to writing this story. A great and terrible weight of my fear, and the truth that must be conveyed. I cannot keep my characters out of the situations that I do not want to be in, in the circumstances in which none of us as humans can control. That may have been why the previous stories were easier to write--their is a tiny sliver of choice involved in certain actions of my characters. They still do not control the circumstances which occur in their lives, but they do choose how they deal with them. They run. They hurt others. They hurt themselves. They throw themselves into relationships because they think it will help. And the problems in their lives, to an extent, is their responsibility.

There is much of that in Sunlight, of course. Much responsibility. A lot of responses which Damir, Amira, and his family choose. However, their circumstances have little to do with their choices. They happen. Damir's parents generally do not choose the circumstances that they grow up in, though his father does choose his original career. But they do not choose to develop the anxiety disorder that they do. Damir and his parents do not CHOOSE to get into the accident that they do. It just happens, and it is entirely out of their control. They have no control over the physical effects that it has on them. Damir has no control over the that they do. Damir and his parents do not CHOOSE to get into the accident that they do. It just happens, and it is entirely out of their control. They have no control over the physical effects that it has on them. Damir has no control over the fact that he develops the same disorder as his parents due to these traumatic experiences. There is little control over their lives.
Or even their deaths.

Perhaps the loss of control is what I fear the most. I've had many fears in my past that I've tried to face in writing, even a morbid desire I've attempted to fulfill in writing, during a time of my life when I felt I was most emotionally unstable. But that time, when the shots just keep on firing, when those terrible situations just keep on piling on with no ability to stop them, with undeveloped coping skills, and then the permanent earthly loss of some of the most important people of my life... perhaps this is what I fear the most.

I do not want to imagine these things happening to myself or my family. And as I researched tonight, something broke, finally, something made me force myself to be honest, and to write this. I am a flawed and cowardly human being. I love my family, and I love my friends, and I love my God. I deal with all these demons I don't have in writing. But I've always wrongly written for myself and myself alone--even if the understanding I wanted to achieve was to help others. For once, I finally understand how incredibly important, how gravely sacred, it is, to be true and honest and sensitive in my writing.

Who's flaky and inconsistent? Why, I'M flaky and inconsistent!

I suppose I'm now finishing Rescue, my mediocre NaNoWriMo story from the previous year, this year. I forget if there's a rule against it, but I'm doing it anyway. Honestly, I'm afraid of re-entering the world of the bitter and biting and unmotivated narrator, whom I didn't really like... okay, I had more of a love/hate relationship going with him. But he freaks me out, honestly. I don't want people to read the story and think that I share his perspective. I'm concerned about the parts of me that do. That's what I believe about characters--that as much as they are DIFFERENT from us, they may reveal certain aspects of ourselves that we may not even realize we have. Or aspects of our personality or thoughts that we don't usually like to acknowledge. Or so it goes for me.

Anyway, regardless of the emotional instability of everysingleone of my main protagonists (EVER WRITTEN, including for roleplays), I just don't feel the Rescue the same way I did last year. And there's SO MUCH FILLER. So much of it! I described "House" episodes at LEAST three times (in long paragraph form--once described by a FIVE YEAR OLD). I even wrote DISCUSSION QUESTIONS, just so I would have enough words.

I guess I'm just going to have to suck it up and write. Because I need to be honest and true to the characters. Regardless of our differences. Or similarities.

This morning, I woke up.

I'll admit, I've had writer's blog for a couple of weeks now. But I wrote a letter for English class last night, detailing the most life-changing event I have had in my recent life, and suddenly, I woke up today. And in my head, was Sunlight.

In the past, I've usually gotten abhorrently obsessed with stories and roleplays I'd been a part of. They would be the ONLY thing I could talk about, the ONLY thing I drew pictures about, the ONLY thing I could write about, even when I wasn't online. So many little stories, character charts, tiny scenes from the stories in personal notebooks, little faces of the characters on math homework in middle school... everywhere. The stories consumed my thoughts. It was unhealthy, really. But I was passionate, at the least.

And for weeks, I haven't had that kind of thinking with Sunlight. And this morning, I just started writing in my head, exactly the scenes that Leah and I had worked through months ago, including some new ones. I didn't want to leave my bed; I wanted to stay in my half-dreamlike state of story, even if the story was sad. And now to write it...

(once I finish my College Speech homework...)

SHIFT IN BLOG OBJECTIVE: This blog is for writing about fiction I write now ONLY.

...All other topics of blogliness will be relegated to my other blog, "Someone Get That Girl a Mood Ring"/iwillbitethephonetoproveitsharmless.blogspot.com, and actual fiction writing will be on procrastinator-writer.blogspot.com.

And now, for my first official entry here:

Sunlight. It is my most recent dabbling in realistic fiction writing. Now I really want to figure out what the heck it's about. See, I want to say it's about a young man who learns that he cannot overcome his problems simply by putting all his hope into a single human being. That HE has a part in overcoming the circumstances of his life, that HE is instrumental in working through his grief and pain, that HE may not be able to do that alone, but that the other extreme is just as harmful and painful.

This story really confronts a few of my own fears, and some of my own insecurities, which really aren't much of a secret. My insecurities definitely stem from incredibly different circumstances than my protagonist, but we feel them, in certain respects, just the same. Where I connect to Damir, is that feeling that everyone else is passing you by. That everyone else has it together, and that fear that we never will. It's depressing, but not exactly depressing in the way it actually feels... it's like a desperation, an urgency, and yet an overall feeling of overwhelming, of helplessness almost, where, at least I realize, there is something we can do about it.

You see, I had originally set out to try my hand at intentional romance-writing again, after I'd kind of taken a break from intentionally writing romance stories. And I see now that I've kind of broken off from my old roots and original idealism... taken off the rose-colored glasses, per se. The story then evolved into the issues I'd been trying to sort out in my mind. And this story has so much meaning, so much DEPTH, that could be accomplished, IF, I try. If I try really hard to be 100% realistic, and 100% honest. If, perhaps, I take my research to more than the internet. If. I write everyday. If I practice writing disciplines.

And if I lose my fear.

I WANT Sunlight to cut to the core. I want it to comment on the value of life, no matter how it is. And yet I want it to show real pain, and raw honesty. I want it to hurt to read sometimes, not to hurt readers, but to make them feel an immense sense of empathy with characters in the story, an experience I really value in reading fiction. I want the story to show the complexity of relationships, and their potential dysfunctions. I want it to not be cast in a constant melancholic fog as I usually write, but at the same time, I do, in the sense that I want to have a consistent tone. On the other hand, I also want there to be bright spots, as life often has. I want the story to be believable. I need this story to be meaningful. I need it to say something that resonates with readers, to be something that, perhaps, doesn't have a particular MESSAGE (though I know I'll have my own, in all honesty... but messages and themes or "key points", as I say for my friend, Leah, are all up to the reader's interpretation of a story), but MEANS something to them. It HAS to say SOMETHING profound, in some way.

Not artsy, image-filled weirdness, for the sake of trying to have a particular style. Not graphic accident scenes, or sneaky promotions of mercy-killing and deep, dark views of life's meaninglessness... unless that's what people want to take from it, I guess. I want it to be something original, but not nonsensical. I want it to be something realistic, and possibly really sad, but not utterly depressing and TOO hard to read emotionally. I want it to just be the story I see in my heart and mind. I want it to be the story I'm being led to write.

And I just really, really, REALLY want it to mean something. Something that HELPS people, not hurts them. Or at least something that opens our eyes.