Pantsing it

Tomorrow is April the 1st, for many it may signify a time to prank someone for an April fool, for me however it signifies the start of Camp NaNo (an offshoot of National Novel Writing Month) and NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month)

I should also state for the record that I am not a poet. I do enjoy writing stuff (please note the word stuff instead of poems as most attempts fail dismally) so I’m going to throw myself in to writing a poem each day for the month of April and, I’m telling myself, posting them on my blog. This part does depend on how much they make me cringe. I’ve signed up for the poetry prompts for each day but will see how I go.

I’m also very aware that I haven’t planned a single word, plot or character for Camp NaNo, a mild panic is beginning to wave over me but I have 4 and a half hours, it’ll be fine……haha…… okay, I’m panicking!

What creative endeavors are you undertaking? What do you do with your creative works? How do you work best creatively? Patterned, planned or pantsed?

Last week I wrote…..

 

As most of you know, January signalled the end of my Mentalisation Based Therapy program. So I went from over 3 hours input a week down to irregular contact with a care co-coordinator who may not be out to get me, but we haven’t quite developed a language we both understand as yet.

The end of therapy went exactly as I expected, and had told the therapy team…. I had two weeks of flying high and functioning beyond my usual level, then I crashed and my head began to feel that it had split apart. The usual anxieties and stresses re-appeared and 6 weeks on I feel as if I am disintegrating, that my head has things growing out of it (yes forgetting my anti-psychotics for a few days hasn’t helped) and my brain feels like a split chocolate orange, with all the different parts struggling to communicate with each other.

The sad part is that in the past few weeks my kids have noticed a change in me; they don’t want as many cuddles as they did when I was ‘well’, my eldest doesn’t want me to read his bedtime story and chooses to read to himself which is part of his growing up but also, I’m sure, in part that I’m not as nice to be around as usual.

Each time I ring the mental health team they ask “what have you done before to get through this” and my answer is that I self harm. But it’s high risk and despite the urge being there I also want to live and my self harm puts me on the edge of survival. Being honest, yes I have self harmed but not to die…. to try and change the way I feel. I don’t know if I’m going to find a way up and out of this lost and disintegrated feeling but I do know that I am trying.

Ive tried exercise, reading, writing, shopping, dancing in my kitchen; I’ve tried duvet days and busy days; Ive tried speaking to people about it and Ive tried ignoring it. None of these are changing the situation but with each day I try and getting through a day means I have lived and been a Mummy for an extra day and that is what matters.

Being friends with people with mental health difficulties

Im someone who gets over involved in other peoples lives; I overhear someone say something and if I have the solution I find myself interrupting them to share it with them….. on one hand its a trait of generosity which I like in myself, on the other hand I can be a busy-body and inappropriate in certain situations.
My world centres around therapy, group therapy, support groups etc so I can find myself spending a lot of time with people who are unwell mentally.
Im okay with that. Ive had to try and learn (im still trying) that I can not fix someone, indeed sometimes I cant even support them even though im willing and able.
The problem with me supporting someone who is ill is that I find I can pick up being unwell off them, so im learning that I have to keep a distance, but even doing that doesnt seem to work for me and I find myself unsteady just after being in a room with someone who is unwell.
Maybe its part of the personaility disorder; the aquiring other peoples modes of being.  It’s one I fight against but often my identity isn’t strong enough to exist alongside someone elses difficulties.
I was very hurt once when a good friend told me she had learnt her mental illness from me and mine. I work very hard to ensure that I am not using other peoples ill health to ‘gain’ from.
My support team has never advised me not to see certain people if they are unwell although they do shake their head and ask questions in an incredulous tone as I explain what happened and why i’m so off centre. They help me pick up my pieces and verbally pat me back together.
Something I notice in myself and others when unwell is that they may say unusual or skewered things, I used to try and put forward other viewpoints but am now very aware (from my own experience)  that their illness may not allow them to be open to alternate ideas, maybe until later, another day or maybe never.
I like, or dislike, people, regardless of their mental health,  and I hope that people are prepared to make the effort to get to know me for more than my mental health difficulties before they decide about me.

Wanting back in.

A problem with having mental illness is the lack of space it leaves for anything else. Once ive dealt with my children’s wants and needs, the household bits, my OH and then my own things I find I have nothing left. No energy to write or think about writing. I have 5 projects in various states of being and apart from 10 minutes today i have done nothing for them this week, or the week before, or indeed the month before that. I need to, I know I need to, and I know I feel better when I do write yet the action of writing is so far away. Im wanting back in, I’m really wanting back in; but will wanting be enough to turn into action? I hope so. 

Novembers books

November’s books are very few as I was busy writing for NaNo yet the 3 books I read were all excellent. So what I lacked in quantity I enjoyed in quality. So here we go…..

A Year Of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman. Beautiful language and slow careful narration which evoked such intense images, I lost myself in their world and was sad to finish it.

All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven. Wow. A Young Adult novel dealing with very serious issues of bipolar, suicide, loss. Read it!!!

Another Day by David Levithan. Fascinating idea and being inside each body. I had to go back and re-read the end numerous times but still feel as if ive missed out on something.  A good read, just be ready for an ending that comes before you’re ready!

Sunday sentence

“Sometimes, Ultraviolet, things feel true to us even if they’re not”

All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

I’m a NaNo winner!!

 

Yesterday I completed my NaNoWriMo work. I discovered NaNo a few days before November began and so my planning wasn’t detailed. I worked out that my ‘novel’ would hit 30,000 words, so when I hit 35,000 I was happy but the story naturally concluded so for the next 15,000 words I did short stories; a fairy-tale, horror and a humorous one.

I attended write-ins at coffee shops, drank an extraordinary amount of tea and coffee and discussed my work with other writers; I got a lot from the past 20 days including a sense of a creative community.

I was nervous about hitting 50,000 words that it takes to ‘win’ NaNo and spent one evening refusing to turn on my laptop as it would mean I’d rush past the finish line and I wanted to savour it, enjoy the flavour of success.

Yesterday was the first day that I didn’t write 2,500 words and I missed the demand of my attention and need to reach my target. I’m thinking I’ll set myself a daily working target, less demanding than my NaNo word count but maybe a time frame of my creative work each day or a certain word count. I’ve not had to think about how to measure creative output before and I imagine I’ll try a few different ways before settling on my own personal creativity measure. How do you measure creativity?

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday Sentence

I haven’t read any new books this week so am posting one of my favourite book dedications….

“I want to thank everyone who helped me to create this book, except for that guy who yelled at me in Kmart when I was eight because he thought I was being “too rowdy.”

You’re an asshole, sir.”

Have a good week!

NaNoWriMo – and so it begins

The past few weeks have been a bit of a wild ride. First I began working on a play, that has come to a slow stop as work demanded a huge amount from me and the stress levels crept up way beyond what I could manage. Work is now calmer and despite wanting to run away from it all, I need to get ready for the same stress over the Christmas season. My plan to reduce stress is to have all elements of the role done within the next few weeks, so the last minute panic is less intense.

This though means I will be juggling a job, more time with the kids and nanowrimo month. I found out about the National Novel Writing Month a few days ago and the idea of a focused creative output with the aim of producing 50,000 words by the end of November appealed. I began today and have written 2,688 words. The general advice is not to edit and just spew the words onto paper/the computer, its a challenge to be had with myself, and even if I don’t meet the target within the set timeframe, I will still have begun on something I wouldn’t have done otherwise. I’m secretly hoping that by writing each day I will find self discipline and be able to keep it up after November has finished.

Do you like writing? What interests you in a story? Are any of you fellow nanowrimo writers? Good luck if you are!

Sunday Sentence

“She got up and when she saw the shimmering pattern of orange stars, she thought the world was upside down and the heavens finally within reach”

A year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman