I don't feel like working on any of my novels today, so I'm just going to type 300 words of what comes into my head.
I have a mood disorder that I generally consider Bipolar Disorder for the sake of having a label, though I have never been officially diagnosed with it. The semester before last one of my medications - I've been medicated for almost six years now - stopped working properly for me, and I had the second breakdown of my life and had to go to the psych ward for six days. Though I was never suicidal, this is part of where my ideas for Sweeping the Puddles Away are coming from.
The other part is when I first realized something was wrong, at age nearly-fifteen, and had suicidal thoughts for months on end. Eventually my parents and I were told by doctors that I should move from Beijing, where we were living, to Virginia, where I could do daytime group therapy for three weeks at a (different) psych ward. You can see how I've melded those two experiences in the premise of my new novel. I plan to meld several different people who have made a difference to me in a few composite characters as well, to protect the real inspirations and also to make the thing more story-shaped. Novels work better than life; everything means something and though nothing really ends, you can frame it nicely.
When we first moved into the house in Falls Church I was finished with Waking Echoes and had spent roughly six months trying to get published, about the same time I had been finished with the hospital treatment. I checked out pretty much the whole section the local library had on writing. I credit this self-created program as a major part of my healing process, and it seemed both logical and wonderful to do something similar again, except with a combination of writing-as-way-of-life books and good exercise at the Embassy gym this summer.
It helps me not miss my love so much. And I am nearly as aglow from it as he makes me.
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Wow! I'd been wondering, actually, where you got such a specific idea. That's very interesting (I hope I'm not coming across as rude, commenting on your real life, by the way. If I am, I'm sorry, and won't do it next time).
ReplyDeleteI would hazard a guess that these experiences or yours influenced Ferdinand and Taylor as well, and I have always been impressed in general by the very capturing and acceptance way you write those with (um, I'm not actually sure what the correct/respectful words for this are) well, with mental differences.
The best of luck to you with your writing and healing and work and love.
Thank you! And you're not being disrespectful at all. I'm very comfortable with that aspect of my life, by now, as long as people know that it's just an aspect and not all of me. It did inform Ferdinand and Taylor greatly.
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