It's Let's-Be-Nice-About-Mental-Health-for-a-Month Month!

May is Mental Health Awareness Month here in the UK, and this year Mental Health Awareness Week is from 23rd-30th May - or 12th-18th May if you believe other sources. I could be churlish and say it doesn't really matter much, because if you actually have mental health issues you don't generally wait until a disputed week in May to be 'aware' of it anyway, but it's jolly nice of people who've never had to battle with such things to take a week out of their lives to not think of us as merely attention-seeking burdens to society for a change. Just for a week, y'know? Kind of like a holiday.

Oh dear, that didn't go too well, did it? There I was, trying to be all positive about what is, after all, a very good and well-intentioned cause - and then at the end I had to go all grumpy-pants and spoil it. Sorry. Of course I am all for raising awareness of mental health. It's not something that's going to happen naturally, after all; people with no knowledge of it are afraid of it, and that fear translates as avoidance and stigmatization. This makes sufferers afraid of talking openly about it for fear of becoming even more stigmatized and isolated, and so the whole thing becomes a self-fulfilling chicken-and-egg conundrum. By making people think about it and ask questions - and, even better, actually provide answers to some of them! - we can all help to make mental health a less scary subject in general. So of course it's a good thing. Bring it on.

My beef about it though, is this: what happens when May is over? Is that when everybody stops being 'aware' of mental health issues and goes back to thinking of it as the realm of maladjusted malingerers and attention-seeking misfits? "Right, we've done our bit - we were all sympathetic and enlightened about the problems those kind of people face for the whole month. But May's over now, right? We can all go back to normal again, yeah?" And unfortunately, 'normal' tends to be a far less sympathetic and enlightened attitude, if my experiences are anything to go by.

Large chunks of society who have never suffered from depression have very little concept of what it actually is. They think it means someone is depressed. They've been depressed at many points in their lives; there was that time their football team dropped off the league tables because they played so badly for a whole season, and then there was that other time when they got dumped by that person they really thought was The One... god yeah, they were really depressed then, for ages. But hey - they got over it. They picked themselves up and got on with their lives. That's how you get over depression!

Um... no. That's how you get over being depressed. Actual Clinical Depression, on the other hand, is something completely different. It's far more complicated than simply being in a period of deep misery - in fact, many people with clinical depression don't appear to be miserable for much of the time at all. They can laugh at jokes and everything, without it meaning that they're either 'cured' or 'just pretending' to have depression. Do you know how much hard work it is, behaving as wretched on the outside as you feel inside, all day every day? Jeez, even people who don't have depression wouldn't have the energy for that! It's just easier to smile when others smile and try to fit in when you're in the company of others, even when your heart is breaking inside. Don't let people see your pain, because it's not polite. Inconsiderate. Anti-social. You feel bad enough about yourself already, without collecting even more reasons to hate the fact you exist. And it still doesn't mean you don't shatter into a million pieces the moment you're alone.

When I had my breakdown at the age of twenty-five, I was diagnosed with two mental health disorders, both of them long-term conditions that you learn to manage and control in order to live a normal life, rather than things you are 'cured' of.  Technically I still 'have' both conditions, although I no longer let them rule my life the way they did before I had therapy for them. But as part of researching them in order to try and understand them - and consequently myself - better, it seems huge parts of society believe these disorders don't even exist. They're not 'real illnesses' at all, apparently - they're just something a bunch of weirdos like me are faking, either because we're pathetic drama queens desperately craving attention or lazy work-dodgers using it as a excuse to never do a proper job in our lives. This is why I next to never tell people I was ever diagnosed with these conditions - and especially not potential employers in job interviews (that's right,  job interviews - how's the 'lazy work-dodger' stereotype looking now, eh?) The idea of openly admitting that part of my history is terrifying to me, because I've come to think of it as shameful. Society thinks it's shameful - and I'm not gonna be the one who stands up and argues with society. Not all on my lonesome, that's for sure.

It's not just my particular conditions that seem to spark this kind of mindset. There are loads of people out there who, apparently, don't believe schizophrenia is real either. Or bipolar disorders. Or obsessive-compulsive disorders. They're all the products of fantasy, made up by 'bad' people to try and explain away their 'weird and unacceptable' behaviour as being 'not their fault,' those manipulative, deluded babies... As if they think we keep having the problems we do because they're just kind of fun to experience, y'know? If the people who think this way were to spend just one day living with some of the worst symptoms of the average mental illness (if you could even define 'average' in that sense) they would see in a heartbeat that it's not something anyone would choose to do - for attention, financial gain or anything else. And no, the disorders I was diagnosed with - and indeed the others I mentioned above - do NOT automatically equate with being violent or 'a potential danger to others' either. In fact, sufferers are way more inclined to hurt themselves before they would even think of laying a finger on anyone else.

But doesn't the fact that I felt a need to clarify that, in itself, say something about the typical attitude to mental health in our society? "It's okay folks - I may have had problems in the past, but honestly, it doesn't mean I'm ever going to try and kill you or anything..." Hollywood and the media doesn't exactly help us out there, of course. Films like 'Sybil' and 'Wonderland' perpetuate the idea that mental health patients are either one-person surrealist art performances or psychotic nutters we should all stay the hell away from, and while many of the murders and acts of violence committed on a daily basis by 'normal' people barely make the headlines, every such act committed by someone with a mental illness like schizophrenia will be national, front-page news (and even when you take that bias into account, it's still a rare occurrence.)

But maybe there's a reason for all of this; a reason that - sort of - makes sense.

The cold, hard truth is that mental illness, like many other illnesses, is an equal-opportunities affliction. No-one is immune to it, regardless of age, lifestyle, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or social class. That's a pretty scary thought. So... what if we could say there are - y'know, certain special qualifications that 'most' people with mental illnesses 'always' seem to have? Retro-fit them with this 'other'-ness that sets them apart from 'the rest' of society? Then all the 'normal' people can breathe a secret sigh of relief and tell themselves "Well, I'll never end up like that because I didn't have a dysfunctional childhood/have never been abused/there's nothing wrong with my brain, thanks very much." (Or of course there's my personal all-time favourite: "I'm a strong person emotionally." Because, as we're all told so often,  everyone who suffers with their mental health is really just a cry-baby wuss who can't handle tough old Real Life, aren't they?)

Now, I'm not denying that all of the above factors can and frequently do cause mental illnesses. Of course they do, and to claim otherwise would be stupid and insensitive. But they're far from being the only Willy Wonka golden tickets required. Even people who've had the most idyllic childhoods and perfectly functional outlook on life can succumb, without warning, to chronic, life-altering mental illnesses. It's a lottery, folks - and even if your number hasn't come up so far, you've still got a ticket just like everyone else, whether you want it or not. I can understand why people would prefer to not think about it like that. There's a kind of comfort in clinging to a list of exceptional circumstances that, as long as you don't fit within them, grants you automatic exemption from a potentially awful contract.

Problem is, that kind of thinking doesn't help anyone in the long run. Making mental illness something that only happens to 'certain types of people' certainly doesn't help those that already have them, because it only makes them feel more shunned by society for their condition and therefore less likely to ask for help - which means they suffer even more for far longer than they need to. And, if you want to be cold and cruel about it, that makes them even more of a 'drain on NHS resources' than they would have been if society was more accepting of their problems in the first place.

But here's the other thing; it also doesn't help all you 'normal' guys out there either. Oh sure, as long as you're fine you can keep reassuring yourselves that mental illness will 'never happen to you' because you're 'not the type.' But then if it ever does - and remember, the truth is you are not immune, any more than you are 'immune' to cancer or heart disease - well, you've gone and made it a lot harder for yourself to deal with now, haven't you? You're going to have to live with with your own prejudices about this illness you 'couldn't' get, as well as the prejudice of everyone around you. You'll probably feel angry with yourself  - you'll certainly feel like you've 'failed' somehow. So you'll be be dealing with those horribly negative feelings and all the others people with mental illness are made to feel every day, by strangers, people in authority and sometimes even friends and families.

So while Mental Health Awareness month is a lovely and noble idea, it's only going to serve any purpose if it makes permanent changes to the way mental health is perceived. This isn't something to focus on every time the calendar hits May, and then on June 1st just stash it all away with the bunting and the banners until the same time next year. It needs to be talked about all year round, as part of everyday conversation. If we are ever to understand it, it needs to become more 'normal', not less.

You wanna become more 'aware' of the truth about mental illness? Ask. Talk to people who've been through it, are going through it. As long as you don't behave like a total dick, they'll tell you. And y'know what? It doesn't even have to be in May.

Born to be A Misfit-Flavoured Writer.

I've heard it said that many writers have felt like the oddball at some point in their life - like they were paddling through the river of life in the opposite direction to everyone else. I am reasonably sure I was born feeling like I didn't quite fit in with the rest of the world. I felt that way throughout childhood, adolescence and  the fun, crazy part of adulthood. And I still feel that way now.

I don't mean in a self-absorbed, hand-wringing 'no-one really understands me!' way. I mean more in the sense of  'Hmmm, I appear to be really rubbish at behaving like other, normal humans' kind of way. It never seemed to spoil my social life - I've had as many friends as other, non-weird people, although I suspect I was probably labelled My Weird Friend by more than a few - and I didn't attract nearly as many bullies as some poor sods with far less potential for ridicule than I possessed. But nonetheless I've always had this feeling of being a kind of imposter in this world; an alien who got accidentally dumped on the wrong planet and has since spent her whole life navigating and minimising the fallout from her cocked-up attempts to blend in with the natives.

It has its advantages, of course. This world will never cease to amaze, horrify, delight, shock, depress, inspire and frustrate me - and the day it does is the day I will know it's because I'm actually dead. It also means I feel no pressure whatsoever to conform to anybody's ideas of how I should look or dress or what I should aspire to; I've got so used to effortlessly failing at all those things for so much of my life already that I dropped out of that competition years ago. And this in itself has the added bonus of making my life far less complicated; I don't have to keep remembering what and who I'm 'supposed' to like and not like according to which particular friend or social group I'm talking to. Even if I just agreed with everyone all the time I'd still cock it up anyway, so I may as well just say what I really think and cock it up honestly.

In terms of what I might laughingly call my 'career prospects,' however.... mmm, yeah, that didn't work out so good. I've had a plethora of jobs over my adult life, and the one that lasted the longest was a rather pitiful four years. I've only been fired from two of them, and that was due to being spectacularly rubbish at those jobs rather than any disciplinary reasons - but even in many of the ones I quit, I'm pretty certain I was a bit of a nightmare employee while I was there. This is because they were office jobs; Dilbert In His Cubicle positions, if you like. The kind of jobs where there was A Method for doing every little thing that job entailed; a Method that had been used for years, by every other person who'd ever done that job, because it was A Method That Worked and was therefore How It Must Be Done At All Times.

Putting a little secret-alien-in-residence like me into any job like that is, inevitably, a conflict waiting to happen. In every one of those types of jobs, I quickly established a reputation for myself as the corporate equivalent of the annoying little kid who constantly asks "But why..?" My colleagues just found it funny that I got so bemused and frustrated by all these Methods and Procedures, while managers' reactions ranged from mild annoyance to suspicious unease, as if they were afraid I was some kind of one-woman revolutionist with a secret agenda to Take Down The Company From Within. I tried to knuckle down and play by the rules - no matter how stupid and archaic I thought some of them were - but even when I did, I still cocked things up for myself.

For example, each time I had my annual Employee Review with my line manager, I'm sure I probably did know, on some basic level, that the correct response to the question "So, have you considered opportunities for advancing your role within this company?" was not to burst out laughing and say "What, seriously?" I'm sure I also knew, if I was honest with myself, that when I was advised to record my progress with the technical tasks of my job in a personal work journal, they probably didn't mean for it to take the form of satirical cartoons and poems. All I can say in my defence was 'it felt like the right thing to do at the time.' Which pretty much proves how utterly unsuitable I was - and probably still am - for office jobs.

Eventually I would reach the inevitable point where I just thought "I can't do this anymore and still retain my sanity." My bosses always seemed genuinely surprised when I handed in my notice, as if it was the last thing they were expecting me to do - but I'm pretty sure they must have breathed huge sighs of relief in private. At least I was finally solving their 'Oh god, what the hell do we do with this one?' conundrum.

Through it all, I always had my writing. In fact, you could argue that my writing - and the kind of mindset that comes in particular with writing fiction - was the one thing I could never entirely separate from my hamster-wheel office job existence, and that was part of my repeated downfall in that field. And now I'm a completely-unemployable-in-the-current-recession mum of a primary-school child, I can finally devote my brain and my heart to my writing without feeling that it's What Makes Me A Misfit Person in this world. Well, okay - maybe it is, ultimately, but at least I'm not giving any middle-managers headaches about it anymore.

But at the same time, I've heard of many, many other writers who've happily held down office jobs while pursuing their writing dreams. They have been able to completely separate the office worker part of themselves from the writer part as effectively as building a partition screen between them, that they can open up and close off as and when it suits them. All of which suggests that being crap at office jobs is clearly not an intrinsic part of the writer make-up - and so the added ingredient must be the misfit part. There must be a subsection of Misfit Writers within the club as a whole, right?

There's hope for them, isn't there? There's a place in this world for Misfit Writers? I mean, I know we can be a bit weird sometimes, and there's always going to be this thing where you'll never feel like you really, truly know us completely - but we're okay people underneath it all, and at least you know if we like you we really do like you, for real ('cause if we didn't, we'd be far more likely to tell you than most other people...)

Maybe there should be some sort of Misfit Writers' Society? Maybe there already is...

Can We All Be Precious Little Snowflakes?

How do you measure your talent as a writer? And by that, I mean in the sense of 'measuring and coming up with the right amount?' Two things happened in my life this week that made me think about this conundrum.

Thing Number One was a conversation I had with someone I met in my local library and, for various reasons involving backstory too dull to go into here, ended up having quite a discussion with about writers and writing.

When the lady in question found out I was a writer (I was brave for a change and actually called myself that - for real! But then again, she was a stranger so maybe not that brave really...) she proceeded to tell me about her cousin, who she said had also been "trying to be a writer for years." And yeah, she said it like that, complete with the statutory sighs and eye-rolling. "She's got no talent for it whatsoever" she added. "Everyone in the family's been forced to read her stuff at some point, and it really is dreadful. We've all tried to tell her - tactfully of course - that she should give up on the idea of ever getting anything published. But she just won't listen! She keeps on writing all this terrible dross and kidding herself she's got the talent - when anyone can see she just hasn't..."

I asked her if her cousin had actually tried to get anything published yet. "No, fortunately" she said. "Once any of us tell her what she's written is rubbish, she just hides it away somewhere and starts on something new instead. And then we all have to suffer that... for God's sake, how many books is the woman going to write before she gets the message that she just doesn't have any talent?"

I'll be perfectly honest here; that was enough information to make me pick a side - and I wasn't rooting for the lady I was talking to. In fact, I began to feel this elusive cousin was pretty damn awesome. To complete even one novel when you have the support and encouragement of loved ones to spur you on is an achievement in itself. To complete many novels with that same support and encouragement is inspiring. But when every novel you finish gets nothing but derision and negativity from your loved ones.. and your response, every single time, is to just pick yourself up and start on the next one? That's bordering on superhuman.

Obviously I don't know if she really is as talentless as the people around her are apparently telling her she is; without actually reading anything she's written there's no way of knowing. But as long as she keeps on doing it, in spite of the naysayers, she can only get better. Damn, if she ever finds a way to bottle that stick-at-it spirit I'd be first in line to get me some! In fact, I wish I could actually meet her - if only to suggest that maybe she gives her stuff to non-family members to read for a change. (Not saying there's any kind of unconscious agenda at work here or anything, but... well, sometimes the ones closest to you can want 'what's best for you' for the wrong reasons, if you catch my drift...)

And then, on what could be described as the flipside, is Thing Number Two.

Through a series of events - again too backstory-ish to be interesting here - I found myself clicking on a link to a self-published book for sale on Amazon. I'm not about to name and shame it here, but it was a 200-page fantasy novel and, like the majority of books on the Amazon site, there was a chance to "look inside!" So that's what I did...

And I have to confess, it was very badly written. By that I mean it was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, words used in the wrong context and/or the wrong tense, random switches between present and past tense - often within the same sentence - and all sorts of other, glaringly obvious, bloopers. Now, this does not necessarily equate to the writer lacking ability. These are the sort of mistakes even the best writers make - in a draft one of their manuscript. Some of them even linger into the rewrite stage for a while, until some eagle-eyed beta reader or editor points them out. But that's the point. The writers that get success and respect for their work do so because they take pains to root out every single mistake - and enlist the help of others for finding those that elude their own eyes - before they will even think of publishing their work. This author clearly did not do this. This author pretty much went 'write it, upload it, hit Publish, baby!'

This is not an uncommon occurrence in the age of one-click-self-publishing, of course. This author is one of a legion who birth their Draft Ones onto Amazon and the like with nary a care in the world - happens all the time these days... But this one stood out for another reason. Because this particular work - a 200-page fantasy novel from a pretty much unknown self-pubbed author - could be yours for the princely sum of... thirty-five dollars.

Yes, you read that right. Thirty-five dollars.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think even a Stephen King novel has ever had a price like that. And he's - oooh, fairly famous now. So I am utterly intrigued as to the thought process behind the author of this thirty-five-dollar-book deciding "Heck yeah, people will totally pay that for my work." Lordy, there's confidence for you! If only she could siphon just a little bit of that off and send it to that lady in the library's cousin... I can't help feeling it would go some small way to restoring the balance of the writing universe somehow.

So that's the conundrum for me this week; is there a magic formula for determining whether a writer's confidence in their ability is justified or misplaced? How do you apply it if there is? And what makes some give up without ever being bold enough to test those icy waters, while others are happy to jump in without even learning the Rules of the Pool first?

The Wall of Self-Doubt

It's official; Simon Cowell has come to visit my brain - and he's brought a bloody great pile of suitcases with him. For the purpose of progressing with my writing, this is Bad News.

This week I finally trundled over the hill that is 50,000 words of Draft Two of The Renegades (now at 54,500 actually.) While I realise that, for the 'professional' novel writer, this ranks in terms of achievement roughly equivalent to getting up in the morning, for me this is a big deal. It's the furthest down the novel-writing road that I've ever travelled. So right now I should be doing The Carlton Dance while simultaneously trying to high-five myself, right?

Mmmmm... yeah, not so much, as it turns out.

I've seen all those talent shows Mr. Cowell has created. The ones where some people - not all, but definitely some - strut in front of him, brimming with the confidence of their own awesomeness, and then indulge in the most godawful spectacle of self-delusion a human could inflict on three minutes of other humans' lives. And when Simon systematically (and some might say, for the sake of humanity) tears their performance to pieces, they stand there wide-eyed and uncomprehending, as if they're not quite sure if they're dreaming all of this.

"He surely can't be serious, can he? He can't possibly be saying that about what I just did - it's obvious I am the most freakin' amazing bucketful of sheer, raw talent he's ever seen... "

Whatever they're hearing when they open their mouths and make sounds come out, it sure as hell can't be what everyone else hears. And they believe in their own hype too; like conspiracy theorists, there is no logical argument you can present to them to sway them from their conviction that they are fabulous and all the naysayers are just insanely jealous...

By the same logic, I could well be the writerly equivalent of those people. And, like them, I wouldn't even know it either.

Since I passed the 50,000 words mark of The Renegades Draft Two, more and more often I've found myself thinking "what if this really is just a gigantic pile of suck? I might think it's coming together okay, and that it makes sense and I've come a long way as a writer because of it - but what if I'm deluding myself? What if, when I've finally finished this thing, it becomes the solid, cast-iron proof that I'm actually a terrible writer who'll never get any of her novels published ever because every novel she writes is a steaming mound of horse-poo?" And then the Simon Cowell currently squatting in my brain does That Face at me, which really doesn't help.

Apparently this is what's known as A Typical Thing among writers. Apparently Number Two: I'm even  having this Typical Thing at a Typical Stage of the Writing Process. The Fear of Being Judged is tiptoeing away from the cozy sanctuary of fantasy and edging ever closer to becoming kick-in-the-guts reality. And yeah, it's blimmin' scary. After all, just because I've gone through large portions of my life expecting to be told I suck doesn't mean I learned to like it at any point...

But other writers have got past this. They've admitted that they too hit the wall of self-doubt - but they just kept on going anyway, until they got published... and then they kept on writing more stuff after that. If I'm not willing to let my novels be judged, I'm never going to finish writing one; I already know that's true from the stacks of half-finished and just-begun attempts languishing in W-I-P Hell on my hard drive. My personal Brain Simon may be right; in the end, even after a metric tonne of rewrites and polishes, The Renegades might turn out to be a legless donkey. And I'm sure, if that's the case, it'll hurt when I actually hear people tell me so.

But... it's a bit of a First-World Problem really, isn't it? There are worse things that could happen. The Fear of Being Crap is a powerful thing, but many of my fellow writers (god bless 'em) have assured me that not only can it be beaten, it must be. I've got through it with writing lyrics, and I've got through it with writing short stories - now I have to suck it up and deal with it when it comes to writing novels.

Does it end? Is this just a phase every writer goes through at a certain stage in a novel's lifecycle, until they come out the other side and say "Hell yeah, let's start submitting/self-publishing this puppy?" Or is it one of those things that pops up on a regular basis to mess with your head - like PMS, but with less chocolate consumption? (Ohh.... alright then, in my case, roughly the same amount of chocolate consumption...)

Perhaps I should just get myself a t-shirt with "I'm having a Mid-Write Crisis!" printed on it.

The Writer's Life As An Online RPG

Yep, you read that title right. I have just outed myself as a geek - which probably comes as a huge surprise to precisely no-one.

But it's an idea that came to me a couple of days ago, and the more I thought about it the more I couldn't let it go. Because the similarities are definitely there, and it got me wondering if it wasn't actually quite a good way of charting the progress of an average writer's endeavours (and I count myself as being within that category.) Having been a writer for a long time - and also an online RPG-er for... not quite as long, but I know the drill - I am willing to offer myself as a guinea pig for the purpose of this experiment. So come join me as we play... World of WriterCraft!

*cue dramatic music and login screen*

Creating a character
Right, we're starting from scratch, so the first thing we need to do is create our writer avatar. We can pick any race and gender we like because, as we all know, they make no difference to our character's abilities... okay, done that. Now, do we want to pick a premade Character Class? Let's see, we've got Journalist, Screenwriter, Playwright, Lyricist, Novelist, Short Story Writer, Poet.... or shall we pick a Multi-Class character? Yeah, let's do that, give ourselves more options. Right... this hairdo, that eye-colour... jeez, do I really want a piercing there..? Okay, done. Right! Into the game - here we GO!

Starting Out
Right, here we are in the newbie area. Oooh, there's a lot of people running around here... they all look the same as our character.Oh hang on, a popup window's just come up. "Welcome to World of WriterCraft! Let's walk you through the basics of Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling." There's a button underneath that says "Skip tutorial" - do we want to do that? Well, we could do that and just get on with playing the game - those things are usually deadly dull, after all... but we all know that'll come back and bite us on the bum later, don't we? Oh heck, let's do the tutorial. You never know, we might learn something we didn't know - and we might even get some freebies at the end. (We can always sell them to a vendor if they're crap.)

*goes through tutorial*

Well that wasn't so bad. And look - we got a Pen of Scribing as a reward! And a rather nice pair of writer's gloves. And - oh yay - Ding! We just levelled up! An extra stamina point and now we're Level 2. Bring it ON!

Doing Some Basic NPC Quests
Right, now we need to do some questing; get some experience and maybe earn a bit of dough as well. Jeez, who are all these people shouting all these adverts repeatedly in the Chat Channels, over and over again? Must be the self-pub spammers... *sigh* will they ever learn? People buy from self-pubbed authors who behave professionally, not the ones who stand in public places shouting their heads off and making a nuisance of themselves.... Anyway, where are these Quest NPCs? Ah, here's one; he's got a glowing exclamation mark over his head, that's useful. Mr... sorry, Lord Genre. What's your quest then, mate? Ah - "Venture into the libraries and bookstores of this fair land and read twenty Booker Prize-winning books, then return to me for your reward." Aw, seriously? That's gonna take ages.. oh, alright then...

...Right - I'm baaack! And I've read your twenty books, as requested. What do I get?

"Well done, young writer! Have 50xp! And now.... I would like to you venture further into the dark and dangerous corners of this fair town's bookstores... and read twenty Penguin Classic books! Return to me once more when you have completed this dangerous task!"

You are kidding me, right? I've just been.... I already went.... Another twenty things to..? Well you could've said that when I was... oh, never mind. Okay, off I go again then...

...Right! I'm back. And I've done your sodding quest. Now where's my reward?

"You are indeed a worthy student, young writer! Here - take this Cap of the Well-Read and five gold pieces. Now I would like you to travel to the Big Library on the edge of town - and read twenty..."

*punches Lord Genre in the face* Y'know what... I'm gonna see if there are any other NPC questgivers around here.

Finally - Crafting!
Aha! This looks more promising - the Crafter! Okay... "So, you wish to learn Fiction, do you? Well, read the book I've just magically smuggled into your inventory, and then speak to me again." Oh, okay then.... right, done that! "Well done - you have now earned your own Crafting Station! Your Fiction Writing skills will improve with each new item you craft, and as your skill goes up you will acquire new recipes and techniques."

Cool! My own Desk and Crafting Computer! So... I just keep writing lots of beginner-level stuff then, until my skills level up and I can start writing more complicated stuff? And I can sell all the stuff I've written on the Auction House as well? Ooh, maybe I'll make some money! And if no-one wants it on the Auction House I suppose I could just flog it to the vendors...

Joining A Guild
Wow - check out those guys over there! Look at their armour and weapons - they're much cooler than mine! I wanna be in their gang....

Hi guys - loving your look, are you looking for new members? What's my what? My Gearscore? What's that? Oh, I see... well actually I'm fairly new to this at the mo... no, I haven't got any higher-level alts to kit me out with Epic Gear, I'm afraid... um, no I haven't done any Instance Raids yet.... *sigh* no, I'm not after some power-levelling.. Fine, I'll come back when I've got 'more xp' then...

Let's try this lot instead... Hi guys, are you looking for new members? You're always happy to accept new members? I can be any level to join? Cool! Where do I sign? Oh, there's a fee - okay, fair enough, how much? How much? *chokes, splutters.* Erm.... okay, maybe I'll think about that later then... yeah, thanks...

Maybe I'll start my own guild then...

The First Big Boss Fight!
Right, I know this one's an important quest, because I got the loading screen when I started it... Stage one, create the Plot Outline.... pppffft, lots of traipsing all over the place and looking in dark corners then.... right, I've collected all the pieces for that, what's next? Find the Great Opening and use it to navigate the Beginning Section.... okay, done that... oh, now I have to navigate through the treacherous Sagging Middle... well, that was tough but - I made it! Now I cross this bridge to the Great Ending... and inside this room is the Final Boss... the Tough Critic! Okay, I'm armed with my Completed Draft... here goes...

Aaaarrgghh! He's flippin' huge! And he's got big claws and pointy teeth.... I am sooo gonna die..! Oh no - he hit me with Adverb Contempt! That's a big chunk of health gone right there... let me just swig a Spellcheck potion.... well that's helped a bit, but - aaarrgghh! Not the Passive Voice Attack! I'll have to put my Good Grammar Aura on... okay, that's mitigated some of the damage.... crap, now he's going to hit me with a massive Plot Hole! There's only one thing for it... I'll have to use my Rewrite Spell!

Yaaayyy, I did it! The Rewrite Spell finished him! I defeated the Big Boss Critic! Now let's go raid his loot chest to see what I get.... oooh, Armour of Thick Skin+1.... nice!

The PVP Arena!
Okay... normally I stay away from PVP, 'cause I'm not the type who goes looking for a fight, but apparently the rewards are awesome, so here goes... here's the venue - "Writers' Conference" - let's do this!

Oooh help! There are tons of people here and I don't know anyone and I don't know what to do! Okay, calm down. Just follow the big groups and do what they do. Don't take on a big Boss Fight on your own - join a big gang who are already taking him on... safety in numbers and all that... Might as well face it, I'm probably not gonna get any of the epic stuff on my first time; there are loads of people here who've done this loads more times than me and know all the tricks for that. I'll just watch them and pick up tips, I think. Ooh, that person over there looks like a fellow newbie... Hi, I'm new here too. Yeah, good idea - let's stick together...

Hmmm... this might not be as scary as I thought it was gonna be...

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Well that was fun! I think I've got up to about level 5 - which is still a long way from being a 'Leet' player (that means high-level, for any non-nerdy people who didn't run away from this post long ago - thanks for sticking around, by the way.) But that's not a bad start - and it's not like I'll be banging my head on the Level Cap any time soon.

This is one RPG I'm going to be playing for a long, long time yet...

Questions That Boggle A Writer's Brain

If anyone has known you're a writer for more than, say, five minutes of their life, you can bet they've asked you at least one of the aforetitled (is that a word? My spellcheck says no, but my brain is saying "it is now, bucko!") You know the kind of questions I mean. The ones that any writer knows can only be answered with a blank expression and a New York shrug.

Non-writers ask them because... well, if you're not a writer they seem like the Great Mystical Secrets that writers keep from the rest of the world, lest they become common knowledge and the truth emerges that anyone and everyone can be Stephen King with the right set of tools and ingredients. Which is true, of course... but neglects to point out that Stephen King and all the other uber-famous and mega-rich writers are just naturally in possession of a more 'right' set than the majority of writers just trying to make a living. And even they still can't answer those really head-mushing questions.

Am I going to attempt to answer them? Am I heck! I'm going to join all my fellow writers in blankness and New-York-shrugginess. But while doing that, I shall be pondering and marvelling on how unanswerable they truly are. Questions like:

1 - "Where do you get all your ideas from?"
Do we have a special box hidden in the attic, marked 'Story Ideas?' Do we sit within a circle of candles, chanting "om" until inspiration strikes? Head into the woods at midnight and play Black Sabbath songs while sacrificing a chicken to Underlord of Stories?

Shrug Number One right there. I dunno - where does a person get the idea he wants a pizza with pineapple and anchovies but NO OLIVES? Part of it comes from life experience ('had that one last time and it was awesome') but other than that it was just... there, in that grey mush under the skull. Non-writers must get ideas, surely? Maybe the only difference between writers and non-writers is that when writers have ideas... they write stuff from them?


2 - "Why do you write [insert genre here]?"
Stephen King, why do you write horror novels? Why don't you write Mills&Boon romance instead? Far less people would accuse you of being weird if you did that, y'know. And you, Catherine Cookson - why didn't you ever have a crack at writing cyberpunk, you silly old thing? You could've been so much more 'down with the kids!'

It's as if they think writers hover over a great List of Genres and either: a) shut their eyes, stick a pin in it and see where it lands or b) scan the choices and think "Hmmm, which one's making the most ker-ching for authors at the moment?" Of course neither of these is true (although that's not to say it's never been tried... it's just never really worked that well as a strategy.) The simple answer is that writers tend to write in the genres they enjoy reading. But then that leads to "Well, why do you like reading those genres in particular then?" Well jeez... why does anyone? Time for another New York shrug...


3 - "How can you write a [insert opposite gender to yourself] main character when you're a [insert your own gender]?"
There seems to be a belief in some sections of the book-buying public that this is somehow impossible at an X-chromosome level. And on one level, I can... sort of see their point. After all, if you as a female have never possessed your very own love sausage, how can you really know what it feels like to carry one around in your pants every day of your life? (DON'T - way ahead of you and let's not go there, thanks...)

But consider this; do the people who ask this question of writers also ask them "How can you write a main character who's a horse when you're not a horse?" No-one considers that an arrogant thing for a writer to attempt - and yet I'd have thought imagining life as a horse would be a lot tougher than imagining life as a fellow human of the opposite gender. Especially since humans are gifted with the power of asking questions of their opposite gender if there's stuff they want to understand. Questions that couldn't be answered by horses. Or dogs. Or mice. Or pigs...


4 - "What's the best way to write something guaranteed to be a bestseller?"
The writers that truly know the answer to this question are the ones who own a continent, eat grapes coated in gold leaf hand-plucked for them by their own personal Oompa-loompa and walk barefoot on specially-constructed clouds, so that their precious tootsies are never sullied by that dirty old thing they call the ground (that's for mortals, losers!) Let's take a moment to count those writers up, shall we? Oh yeah, that's right...

I'm pretty sure even Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin and Stephanie Meyer would lurve to know the answer to this question. But even they don't. Getting each new idea to a completed first draft is only the first stage in a long journey - and even doing that is a Herculean milestone that every writer has to reach before they can even think about how great their final work might (or might not) be. Writing isn't like baking a cake or building an IKEA wardrobe; put all the right bits together in the right quantities and the right order and you'll get the same thing every time. It's more like alchemy.

(Not to be confused with "ALCHEMY, Khashoggi... pure ALCHEMY!" Although that would be pretty darn cool...)

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Is there a writer alive who could actually provide the all-seeing answers to any of these questions? Truth is, you might as well ask them what's the best way to guarantee you'll win the lottery...

(Except I have a nagging suspicion there actually might be a way to do that. Not a legal way, but a way, nonetheless... )

Writing is not for sissies, 'cause there aint no guarantees. It's years and years of slogging away, our work possibly being ignored for most of our lives - heck, maybe all of them, we don't know for sure until that magic bell rings. And even when it does, we might end up being hated for it as much as loved (I'm sure E.L. James has had to grow a skin of armadillo-esque strength since 'Fifty Shades...') That's why some of us drink and get depressed sometimes.

But that's also why we love it. We're suckers for a challenge. And just a little bit crazy.

Writing Distracted versus Knowing When You're Beaten

At this very moment, I'm sitting here attempting to write this post while my seven-year-old son is playing a computer game on his daddy's computer, less than five feet away from me. Which means that, while attempting to put words on a screen that actually sound like a human being with a working brain, my world is filled with the sounds of:

"CHING-CHING-CHING CH-CHING! DUUUUUUDDDE! AWW DUUUUUDDDDE," *pounding of jumping feet and sound of several nearby objects crashing to the floor from the vibrations* "CHI-CHING CHING AAAAAAHHHHH NO-NO-NO-NO DUUUUUUUUUDDDDE!!"

And guess what? Today is the first day of his two-and-a-half weeks of Easter holiday.

Now don't get me wrong. I adore my little laddie and I'm thoroughly looking forward to spending time with him, doing all kinds of things out there in the big wide world outside while he's off school. And he is independent enough now that he can find other things to occupy himself for a two-hour period of a day without needing my constant supervision. So, grabbing my precious two-hour daily writing slot even while he's at home should still be doable, right?

Well yeah - in theory... the 'theory' being that I can still make my brain work while an accompanying backing track that sounds like a cross between the lyrics of a Katy Perry song and a battle scene from 'Lord of The Rings' plays constantly at ear-splitting volume nearby. Seven-year-old boys are incapable of playing any game - computer or otherwise - quietly, as anyone who has one will know. And, as a mum, I am also constantly aware of the potential for damage and/or danger that can come from the actions of a mega-excited seven-year-old living the dream of being a Jedi Knight in a tiny terraced Victorian house. It's not like you can afford to just switch off and ignore the racket entirely - you gotta keep one ear open just in case...

I don't know if this is a universal truth (since I'm only married to the one bloke) but my impression is that Dads (i.e. men) appear to be wired differently. They have this innate ability to focus in so deeply on whatever they're doing that the rest of the world almost seems to disappear into the ether. My husband can sit in the same room with my son, tapping away at his laptop or watching something on the telly, and remain completely oblivious to the chaos unfolding around him, to the extent that my son will come and find me elsewhere in the house and say "Mummy, can you get me a drink, please? I've asked Daddy ten million times but he won't listen to me." (Don't worry - it was probably only about three times really, but my son has a sublime gift for exaggeration.)

HOW DO YOU GUYS DO THAT? No seriously - what's the technique? Because if I can't master it, I'm thinking that I might have to give up on the idea of sticking to my writing schedule for the next two-and-a-half weeks. I don't really want to do that - even thinking about it makes me sad. But then, so does the idea of spending every two-hour session writing six words (five of which I hate so much I'm probably going to to delete next time anyway) because I can't stay 'in the zone' for more than thirty seconds at a time.

Hmmm. Need to decide which of the two options I hate the sound of less, I suppose, and go with that. Sorry this isn't an upbeat post today, but I have, throughout the time of writing this, been hearing mangled lyrics of various songs mixed with shrieks, lines from Star Wars movies and occasional suspicious-sounding crashes and clatters. And it's kind of hard to concentrate.

I am completely and utterly open to any advice or suggestions, believe me.