MENTAL HEALTH FOR WRITERS

The theme of the SCBWI-Carolinas fall conference in Charlotte this past weekend was "Oh, the Places We'll Go."  And where I went was away from my computer screen, out of my hole, my busy-ness, my stale state of mind, and my writer's block and into a world of possibilities, dreams, connections, inspiration, and support with fellow writers.  Now if that isn't good mental health for a writer, I don't know what is.

Writing by its very nature is lonely, isolating, stressful, and emotionally draining.  Ironically, it is often the chosen profession or obsession of creative people in less than stellar mental health who are ill-equipped to ride the roller-coaster of rejections.

No matter what your state of mind or stage in the writing process these days, you might be surprised at what you'll find when you venture out "to go places."   

Take me, for instance.  I'm the queen of lurkers on several writers' listserves. I haven't darkened the door of our local critique group in years, and I rarely venture out to conferences these days.  Maybe it was the spirit of Dr. Seuss himself, or the shere desperation of one writer in search of an agent that drew me to the SCBWI-Carolinas conference this past weekend in Charlotte.  No matter.  Within a few short hours of writerly immersion I found encouragement from fellow authors (especially Alan Gratz), a second wind for the agent pursuit, and a fresh twist for a new manuscript rolling around in my head.

Thanks, Dr. Seuss  and (SCBWI conference leaders).  I really needed that!

THE AGENT GAME

For the past several months, in between teaching and family commitments, I’ve been hot on the agent pursuit with my YA novel written in verse and set in the sixties, two factors that immediately distance me from all those dystopian-paranormal-urban fantasy-supernatural-pop culture-hungry agents. I jumped into this pursuit realizing that the odds might be against me in this market at this particular time with this particular piece of work, but hey, maybe I just want to suffer. As I come up for air, my statistical read-out according to http://www.querytracker.net/ goes something like this:


• Dozens of disregards: I stopped counting somewhere around 3 dozen. These are the agents or agencies whose profile or list have nothing in common with my particular offering after minutes or precious hours of researching websites, blogs, agent bios and current book lists

• 25 query submissions
• 16 rejections
•  3 offered kind and encouraging words but still “passed” (rejected)
• 3 requests for a full (complete manuscript)
• 1 rejection with kind words and “I didn’t fall in love with it that much”
• 2 fulls still under consideration

That last sub-bullet has me shivering in my boots. The outer limits of the typical 6-8 week response time is upon me, and I’m thinking I should have heard by now. If they were “in love” with my manuscript they would pick up the phone and knock my socks off with that sought after phone call. And I know I should press on ahead, getting my next batch of one or two dozen queries out there. And in the in-between times, I should be energetically cranking out the next creative thing I can think of writing. But first, I’ve jotted down a few words of wisdom I’ve picked up in all those rejection letters……..

Dear Mr., Missy, or Lass

Regrettably I fear I must pass,

I’m concerned about your work in this market

Frankly, take the manuscript and park it

Your piece doesn’t stir up my passion

ReVAMP it, it’s way too old fashion

I can’t connect with your setting

The voice I’m really regretting

Thanks for sending your stuff

Sadly, we don't love it enough

Your project’s not right for our list

Honey, I think you’ve been dissed.

A Good-news Story

Once in a while there is good news like the Charlotte Observer article featuring Mike Weaver, a former teacher from Charlotte who has learned to live with bipolar disease.  After battling with his disease for a while, Weaver switched to a career in mental health in order to help others cope with mental health issues.  He has been invited to the White House along with four others to attend a July 26, 2010 event to mark the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.  Weaver was recently elected Consumer Council Director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.  He hopes to use this position to help demonstrate that people with mental illness are able to shape their own futures.  "I'd like people with mental health diagnoses not to be viewed as problems to be fixed," he said, "but as fellow humans who have hopes and aspirations and dreams.....and can achieve them." 

As both a teacher and a writer, I have encountered fellow humans with mental health diagnoses whose hopes, aspirations, dreams and yes, achievements far surpass normal expectations.  Sometimes the way these individuals look, sound, or act may not seem "normal."  So what is normal anyway?  Is it normal to be a real estate agent with Tourette's Syndrome?  Or a classroom teacher with ADHD or bipolar disease?  How about a minister with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?  These, and countless other examples are far from normal.  They are exceptional, and the outcomes of such exceptions often reap products, results, and succsesses far superior to the norm.

Kudos to those in real life who overcome the stigma and obstacles associated with mental illness, and who fashion a future of hope and promise for themselves.  And kudos to reporters and writers who give such individuals a fair shake in books and the news media.

State of Mind

Mental health is always on my mind.  Maybe it’s because the protagonist in my ready-to-be-published book is frightened out of her skin by watching her mother slowly unravel not once, but twice. 

Laura, my fourteen-year-old main character, can’t get a straight answer about her mother’s condition from anyone close to her in this typical lower-middle class family during the early sixties.  The doctor calls it a nervous breakdown, and that’s as far as the explanations go.  It’s up to Laura to deal with it on her own, so she retreats inside a shell for the most part.

I forgot to mention that Laura is a standout artist who can’t imagine life without a sketch pad or paint canvas.  Shy, blushing, high-strung  Laura  has inherited her mother’s artistic  gift.  In fact, it’s her only claim to fame at Crawford High, and they are counting on Laura to bring in the state art award this year.  But after her mother falls apart during a frenzied painting spree, Laura literally shoves everything to do with art under her bed.  Pursuing it is too much like playing Russian roulette. 

With her mother in an institution and her only passion buried, what’s left?    You’ll have to read the book, (or offer to represent it or publish it, heh, heh) for now.  But I can tell you this.  Laura, like many members of dysfunctional families, has to define reality based on the circumstances of her immediate environment.  And she has to make choices upon which her survival depends. 

Choices play heavily in families dealing with bipolar disease.  The term “nervous breakdown” is often used, by the way, to loosely describe a diagnosis of bipolar disease. 

It seems at least once or twice a week an article appears in the news that features the devastating aftermath of a bipolar rampage.  Different scenarios play out.  Sometimes the mentally ill member chooses not to take the prescribed medication.  Sometimes one or all of the family members choose to ignore that the condition even exists.  Sometimes the choice is made by the health care professionals who choose to release a distraught and dangerous patient before effective treatment can be accomplished. 

Last month the Charlotte Observer reported the case of Kenny Chapman.  He twice sought help at an outpatient clinic, and was twice released when he said he wanted to harm and kill his wife.  He convinced them he wouldn’t act on his threats.  The technicians chose to believe him, and sent him home with medication.  Just hours after he left the hospital he killed his wife and two kids.  He spared two remaining children, his own by birth, but threatened them with their lives if they let on at school.  They chose to keep quiet for two weeks until somebody caught on.  They survived.

Today the paper chronicles the hospital and court history of Austen Minter, a documented patient with bipolar disease, who killed his pregnant wife and two kids and himself. One seven year old survived to tell the story that “daddy did it.” 

I choose to write about this horrid form of mental illness because I am an adult child of a mentally ill person, and I would do anything in my power to help someone else along on their journey.  

It's All About Layers

I have a work-in-progress about one teenage girl’s view of craziness. It’s been my WIP for longer than I’m willing to admit so you have to know I am living it and breathing it at this point. In fact, I am so sick of it I am ready to upchuck it and quickly clean up the mess before anybody comes along to ask questions. But I think the reason it is taking me so long is that it has been sort of like putting an onion together layer by layer (just picture peeling in reverse.)

I started with a core of the raw truth, where the layers were thin, slippery, slimy and enough to make my nose run. I knew I wanted to mine my own crazy past, but I was unable to let myself stray too far from the facts. I had to leave off many of the factual layers and replace them with fiction. I was surprised at how fun this became, and soon my garbage can was full of discarded family secrets. Don’t worry. There were plenty left.

Then an astute critiquer said the protagonist of this would-be YA saga was way over the top in adult ways, so I had to pile on YA voice, action, drama, and melo-drama. I’m really starting to tear up now but I keep going. The next very wise piece of advice suggested that this story written in verse was lacking narrative cohesiveness. Basically, the story got lost in the verse. These last layers were hardest. The pieces were larger and thicker, and the closer I got to the outer layer, the more fragile they became. They crumbled under my touch if I wasn’t careful. Well, by now I am awash in tears but the onion is done, I think.

Now, to market, to market, with one raw onion.