How writing helped with my depression

***Trigger warning: Mentions of depression, self-harm, and suicide. Please don't read this post if these things are going to trigger you. Here's a link to cat pictures instead: Cute Cat Pictures*

Often times as a 14 year old, I went through periods of hopelessness and anger. This was due to my struggles with depression, which came from situations in my life that I had no way of resolving and was stuck in. They weren't pleasant situations, obviously.

I've never had many friends in "real life". Many people have chose to ostracize or ignore me for any number of reasons (they're in a clique, I'm homeschooled, etc). But even with the two close friends that have stuck with me for a few years now, I didn't feel comfortable really telling them what exactly I was going through. All of this meant that I was left alone to dwell in my pit of depression and had no way of properly dealing with it. There were many times that I was tempted to cut my wrists because I thought it would help (I never cut, thankfully. I turned to clenching ice cubes or soaking my hands in cold water.)

The one thing that kept me from cutting or taking other drastic measures was writing. I would spend hours glued to my laptop writing stories that I cringe reading back on now, but at the time it was therapeutic for me. Writing gave me a purpose. It distracted me from the crap in my life. It made me feel like I was worth something.

Today I was thinking some particularly morbid thoughts about death (and no, I'm not suicidal or depressed), and it made me remember how bad I used to have depression. While I have no wishes to die right now (I've got goals and stuff for my life and people I love who love me in return), I wonder if 14 year old me would've ever gotten depressed enough to want to die. If my situations had not improved, would I have gotten desperate enough to want to end it all by killing myself?

It's a scary thought to consider, especially since I'm such a happier person now. I hate to think about the drastic measures 14 year old Kelley had at her disposal, and I'm really glad she didn't take any of them. Now that I'm here in a better place, I wish I could go back in time and show 14 year old Kelley that it did get better, that we weren't going to be stuck forever.

But I know that everything in life, good or bad, can have a lesson in it. The lesson I learned was probably this: Behind my storm clouds are rainbows. Even though it can take awhile for the storm clouds to clear, it's worth seeing it through.

And I am worth something. It's not just my writing that gives me a purpose. I'm a living, breathing human being and I deserve to be happy.

I'm going to accomplish stuff because life is short

Seriously, life is short. We're not guaranteed tomorrow.

I've always known that my dad's condition is fragile. He's been through a lot these past 9 years. But I want him to see me get published. He's always been quite supportive of my writing and has this idea of me getting published. And I want that to happen. I want him to see me get published, whether it be a short story or novel. I REALLY want him to see me get a novel published, but I know that getting a novel published is a long ways away from now.

After discovering he's got another cancer, I was stunned and feeling hopeless at first. But here I am...what, an hour later? Here I am feeling a new sense of motivation to hurry up and finish a story. I slacked a lot during May, but now I need to get back into writing a lot so I can go out there and get something published. I'm not saying that I need to pound out ten thousand words in a day then ship that story off. There is editing and revising (and maybe rewriting), but before any of that happens, I have to kick my butt into gear and finish something.

So I have deadline for myself: Whether it be a short story, poem, novella, or novel, I want to have something ready by the end of August. Ready as in finished, beta-read, and edited (or revised/rewritten). I want to have sent something out by September, because even if I don't get published this year, at least I can tell my parents that I've tried.

I'm not going to be such a slacker anymore.

Blocked With My Writing and Why

I've always heard that if you're blocked with any writing project that you should write out why you're blocked, and eventually (hopefully) a way past the block will show itself.

Let's hope this works.

For the past 5 months, I've been working on Draft 2 of my horror novel, Prisoners of The Mind. A lot of what I've written has been "trashed" (filed away in a file, probably never to be used again). I struggled with how I wanted the plot to go, etc etc. Only for the past 2 months have I felt like I've really figured out where I wanted to go with this story.

Unfortunately around the beginning of April, my dad fell ill. He does have congestive heart failure and asthma, so it's not unusual for him to lie around for a few days and be a bit unwell. This time things ended up differently. He wasn't getting better. He'd spend a lot of the night coughing and gagging. There was also some pain in his chest and lung areas, causing him to think that he may have a blood clot.

All of April he was like this, in constant pain and having never ending coughing fits. Eventually he went to the doctor and was told he had a blockage in his throat (a surgery on his neck a couple of years ago ended up scorching his throat and the growth is layers of skin attempting to heal it). Then he told us that he'd gotten pneumonia too.

Now under normal circumstances, he 'd enter the hospital for a week then come out fine. This time he refused to go, saying he wanted to stay home with his family. But as far as I know, he has received little or no antibiotics. And he's not getting better.

This has placed stress on all of us. I've been babysitting my siblings for a few years while my mom works. Now that Dad is so ill, it's become mostly me in charge. I like to call myself the "surrogate mommy". And honestly, I don't mind doing what I can to make my parents' lives easier. I just find out emotionally taxing at times. My sisters are 4 and 12, then my brother is 9. Obviously there is a bit of rebellion every now and then from the three of them, but my brother is the worse. I'm not saying that to be mean. He is just very argumentative and tests my patience.

Throughout all my emotional struggles with doing what I am doing and experiencing all this stress with my dad's illness, I try to keep writing. It's therapeutic for me. When I can't write because I'm experiencing a block, it's insanely stressful, and unfortunately I sometimes let this show via my emotional state (irrationally angry, etc). Or I just feel lost and spend lots of time whining on Twitter about it.

With writing this, I can already feel a weight being lifted off of me. I hope that with confessing all that I have, I can hopefully get back to writing more tonight or tomorrow.

Believability With Fictional Characters and Depression

My novel (WIP), Prisoners of The Mind, has been an ongoing project all year. I wrote it for NaNoWriMo 2013, and then completely started over at the beginning of this year with it. My NaNo draft of it had no plot and it was an unholy (no pun intended) mess. xD Of course, I'm not on the same draft I started with in January. There have been lots of "false starts" that I've set aside. I can't count how many uncompleted versions I've set aside!

One of my main reasons for having restarted so many times is that I struggle with making the characters' actions believable. My four FMCs are in an alternative mental health institution and suffering from some pretty serious stuff (Abby and Keri are both diagnosed as schizophrenics, yet not the same kind, but that's for another blog post). While I have family members and friends who've suffered (and some who continue to suffer) from various mental illnesses, I still struggle with whether or not I'm portraying these illnesses correctly. I've done research, but I still worry. I don't want to romanticize it or completely misrepresent it (like I've seen done way too many times with dissociative identity disorder).

I myself have struggled with depression. Not just "oh I've had a bad day" kind of depression. I mean full-out, I hate myself and am completely inadequate kind of depression. While I won't go into why I've had these feelings, it's never been an easy thing to deal with. At 14 I wanted to cut myself, and at times I still do. I can't remember what particular thought/feeling triggered that urge. I told my mother that night, and while I completely advocate having a support buddy (because a lot of times it's kept me from taking drastic measures), part of me somewhat regrets telling her it that night. Or rather telling her when I was having an urge. She (unintentionally) made me feel uncomfortable about the whole thing. To this day I don't tell her when I want to cut or am feeling inadequate, etc. I have an online buddy whom I'll talk to, and that has saved me a lot of times from taking drastic measures. I am forever grateful for that friend.

Keri Lanier, one of my FMCs, is diagnosed with schizophrenia before she enters the institution. But she also has depression. A lot of times I find myself venting my feelings (past and present) through her. She is a lot like me, both in personality and what she is suffering from. This is therapeutic for me in so many ways, and I think that maybe since I'm putting so much real life experience into her, that she will be believable. I hope she is. Maybe too with venting through her, I can let go of some of my own angst, and hopefully come to love myself more.

I'm hoping to have this draft finished by December 31st. If I can get better with character believability (I have a beta reader and then another person who edits my chapters. They both give me excellent feedback on my story.), hopefully I can keep moving forward and meet my goal of having a completed second draft by December 31st!

In which Kelley realizes something somewhat terrifying and exciting about her novel....

In November, one of my NaNoWriMo projects was a psychological thriller/horror novel titled Prisoners of The Mind. The final word count ended up being 91,023 words. I despised the ending somewhat, but thought I could work it out somehow. Maybe make a sequel for it, or just have to give the ending a little more revision than the rest of the book needed.

Wrong.

I started prepping for revisions earlier this month. Originally I had just planned on making notes in each chapter for what I wanted to change, etc, but eventually I slipped into outlining. An enjoyable process, until I hit Chapter 4 and came to a somewhat awful realization: The rest of the book has to be scrapped.

Okay, maybe not all of it. I could salvage a few scenes from it, but the rest of the story-line from Chapter 4 on changes completely. I have to rewrite it all. This both terrifies and excites me for the obvious reasons. I mean, hey somewhat new story to write with these awesome characters, but.....omg. THINGS. I can't even explain my feelings right now. Just THINGS OMG.

Anyways, I'm starting revisions/rewrites in January with the goal of 1 chapter per day. I'm hoping this will get me half way or most of the way through the book. Then I'll finish up that draft in February and let it simmer while I distract myself with prepping for Camp NaNo.

And now I must go, because ooh Twitter so shinyyyy.

I may have a problem come January. xD

Preparing for a month of epic overachieving

NaNoWriMo's less than 2 weeks away, and I'm pretty darn excited. But before the event starts, I have some things to prepare.

Somehow I coerced my brain into thinking that doing a 50kKillMeNow challenge was a perfectly good idea. I plan on doing it on a Friday. Thankfully Mom has no work on that day, so I think it'll be a little bit easier to coerce her into letting me stay up late that first night.

But on the "off-chance" that I don't make that 50k day, I plan on shooting for it over the weekend. Of course, there's a slightly better chance that I could actually reach such a word count on those days. It's just a matter of making my siblings leave me the heck alone! ;P

Yeah, this should be interesting. xD

Here's a list of all the NaNoWriMo challenges I'm undertaking:

-50kKillMeNow on Nov. 1

-50k weekend

-Writing anywhere from 200k to 300k words that month

-Writing 8-10k every day

So, my fellow NaNo'ers, whether you happen to be overachieving or not, what are your NaNoWriMo goals?

SeptNoWriMo-Day 2

It's going...okay. I wanted to write 15k in three days but I don't know if that's happening. I wrote somewhere around 1,700/2,000 words yesterday, and I don't even think I've made 1k today. Ugh, but hey words are words and at least I'm getting something down.

Right now I'm working on fanfiction. I tried outlining some of POTM in August and lost the excitement to work on it anymore, so for now, my September will revolve around...fanfiction.