Long overdue update
Jan. 3rd, 2012 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
megwrites1.
Other people have said this before, but I think it bears re-iterating.
The stereotype of the romantically mentally ill writer/artist who's so sad and tortured but creates great art because of that pain is absolute crap. After the last two months of my life in which I've dealt with the worst depression and anxiety I've ever had. And it didn't help me write. Insomnia and panic attacks and suicidal ideation made writing a lot harder, actually.
Having proper meds and getting enough sleep and being able to function helps me write. And frankly, as my depression got worse, so did my ability to even string a sentence together, much a cohesive story.
I'm doing better now, but I officially have zero tolerance for anyone who wants to talk shit to me about "artistic temperaments". Or for anyone who wants to make jokes about psychiatric medicines or about mental illness or about any of it.
2.
.
I know I haven't been around much, and lately my posting and my ability to get up with stuff has taken a dramatic nose dive.
The reason for that is mental health issues. In the beginning of November, I ended up needing to go to the psychiatric ER here in Charlotte. I'd been self-harming for a long time, but I was getting to the point of having daily suicidal thoughts and coming up with a plan. I'd been making bargains, telling myself, "If it doesn't get better in six months, I can end my life." Except that bargain kept including a short and shorter time frame, until it got to the point where I was asking myself, "Why wait? Why not get it over with now?"
Very literally, I was in hell. Nothing made me happy or even neutral. I didn't enjoy anything, I cried more than is normal for me, I had panic attacks where I couldn't breathe or think, I couldn't sleep. Everything became hopeless, worthless, and unending. I was in the purest kind of misery I'd ever experienced.
There were many days where I'd pray to get sick or to have something happen to me or to get in a car wreck.
And then I found myself speeding down an empty road looking for something really solid to crash my car into. I stopped myself when I realized I'd gotten up to about eighty miles per hour and that the road wasn't going to stay empty. I tried to deal with that, tried to go on, but I couldn't after that.
So I told Husband Man that he needed to take me to the ER. I went shaking, crying, and hyperventilating while he held my hand and guided me there. I nearly collapsed having to admit why I'd come but eventually the nurses got me calmed down, gave me a really warm towel-blanket hybrid thing and I started the process of Getting Help.
I'm still in the early stages of that. It's not an overnight thing and this has been building for years. I should have sought help a long time ago, but those old, old fears about being revealed as "crazy" stay with me.
This is partly why I'm talking about this publicly. Because I need to get over that. I have nothing to be ashamed of. No more than a person with a broken leg or sprained wrist does. My brain just happens to be in my brain. It doesn't make me instantly a liar or dangerous or unreliable. It doesn't make me deserving of punishment or scorn.
It makes me a person with a problem. All people have problems. This is one of mine. I refuse to let the shame and the ableist crap that I've had flung at me over the years to stop me from getting help and from doing what I need to do. And that includes talking about this.
3.
Now for something a bit happier! I wanted to send out my profound gratitude to all of you on my f-list here and LJ and various other places for speaking about your mental health issues: your meds, your doctors, your treatment, your good days and bad days, your trips to the hospital, your insurance woes. All of it.
For all the words you've written, whether it's public or under lock where a select few can see them, thank you. In a way, your words helped me. Knowing that I wasn't alone and that people do live and cope with these things helped. It helped to see that people I admire deeply and respect for their talent, kindness, humor, fierceness, righteousness, bravery, and general awesome had these issues, too, gave me hope that it wasn't a sentence to never be anything.
Thank you so much. I may not have commented on what you wrote, but I was reading. I did pay attention. Your words stayed with me and many of them specifically came back to me when I needed them.
4.
I need book recs! The holiday season left me bearing gift cards to places where books (electronic and paper) might be acquired and I definitely want to dive into some good things.
Especially fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal romance/urban fantasy written by authors of color (women and non-binary folks esp.), queer authors, and other such folks. I'm beginning to think I need a rule that says I won't read any paranormal romance/urban fantasy written by white women and published by a major publisher/press without three trusted sources first vetting it.
Why? Because the first book of 2012 is turning out to be disappointing. I thought it had promise, I really did. The guy who seemed like he'd be the love interest in the first chapter turned out to be the villain. When the villain begins stalking the heroine, she does all she can and it's made clear that stalking is wrong and creepy and evil! When someone implies it's her fault because she had coffee with the guy, she doesn't take that shit at all! The two main characters don't immediately fall into instant lust and want to fuck each other and mystically bond, they start out as distant acquaintances!
But then the fail started coming in. Describing a character as "East Asian in a dreamy way" (as opposed to the icky kind of East Asian?) and having the main male character get snarly at a bunch of cops for hitting on the main female after the stalker-villain destroys everything she owns, but then insisting she stay with him until she gets on her feet and mentally undressing her all the while.
I'm not sure I'm going to finish this book, hence the need for recs!
Oh, and any really great biographies/histories of non-white/non-European people or subjects would be great. Especially if they're written by non-white/non-European authors.
5.
I kind of want to start a discussion about self publishing and e-books, especially from the side of readers. How much do people out there read self-published books and ebooks? Where do you get them from, how do you find them, what appeals to you? Is the quality better, worse, the same as traditionally published material?
So, chime in if you like to let me know. How often do you read self-published vs. traditonally published books? Ebooks vs. paper books?
I've been meaning to ask these questions for a while, but well. See numbers 1-3 for reasons why.
Other people have said this before, but I think it bears re-iterating.
The stereotype of the romantically mentally ill writer/artist who's so sad and tortured but creates great art because of that pain is absolute crap. After the last two months of my life in which I've dealt with the worst depression and anxiety I've ever had. And it didn't help me write. Insomnia and panic attacks and suicidal ideation made writing a lot harder, actually.
Having proper meds and getting enough sleep and being able to function helps me write. And frankly, as my depression got worse, so did my ability to even string a sentence together, much a cohesive story.
I'm doing better now, but I officially have zero tolerance for anyone who wants to talk shit to me about "artistic temperaments". Or for anyone who wants to make jokes about psychiatric medicines or about mental illness or about any of it.
2.
.
I know I haven't been around much, and lately my posting and my ability to get up with stuff has taken a dramatic nose dive.
The reason for that is mental health issues. In the beginning of November, I ended up needing to go to the psychiatric ER here in Charlotte. I'd been self-harming for a long time, but I was getting to the point of having daily suicidal thoughts and coming up with a plan. I'd been making bargains, telling myself, "If it doesn't get better in six months, I can end my life." Except that bargain kept including a short and shorter time frame, until it got to the point where I was asking myself, "Why wait? Why not get it over with now?"
Very literally, I was in hell. Nothing made me happy or even neutral. I didn't enjoy anything, I cried more than is normal for me, I had panic attacks where I couldn't breathe or think, I couldn't sleep. Everything became hopeless, worthless, and unending. I was in the purest kind of misery I'd ever experienced.
There were many days where I'd pray to get sick or to have something happen to me or to get in a car wreck.
And then I found myself speeding down an empty road looking for something really solid to crash my car into. I stopped myself when I realized I'd gotten up to about eighty miles per hour and that the road wasn't going to stay empty. I tried to deal with that, tried to go on, but I couldn't after that.
So I told Husband Man that he needed to take me to the ER. I went shaking, crying, and hyperventilating while he held my hand and guided me there. I nearly collapsed having to admit why I'd come but eventually the nurses got me calmed down, gave me a really warm towel-blanket hybrid thing and I started the process of Getting Help.
I'm still in the early stages of that. It's not an overnight thing and this has been building for years. I should have sought help a long time ago, but those old, old fears about being revealed as "crazy" stay with me.
This is partly why I'm talking about this publicly. Because I need to get over that. I have nothing to be ashamed of. No more than a person with a broken leg or sprained wrist does. My brain just happens to be in my brain. It doesn't make me instantly a liar or dangerous or unreliable. It doesn't make me deserving of punishment or scorn.
It makes me a person with a problem. All people have problems. This is one of mine. I refuse to let the shame and the ableist crap that I've had flung at me over the years to stop me from getting help and from doing what I need to do. And that includes talking about this.
3.
Now for something a bit happier! I wanted to send out my profound gratitude to all of you on my f-list here and LJ and various other places for speaking about your mental health issues: your meds, your doctors, your treatment, your good days and bad days, your trips to the hospital, your insurance woes. All of it.
For all the words you've written, whether it's public or under lock where a select few can see them, thank you. In a way, your words helped me. Knowing that I wasn't alone and that people do live and cope with these things helped. It helped to see that people I admire deeply and respect for their talent, kindness, humor, fierceness, righteousness, bravery, and general awesome had these issues, too, gave me hope that it wasn't a sentence to never be anything.
Thank you so much. I may not have commented on what you wrote, but I was reading. I did pay attention. Your words stayed with me and many of them specifically came back to me when I needed them.
4.
I need book recs! The holiday season left me bearing gift cards to places where books (electronic and paper) might be acquired and I definitely want to dive into some good things.
Especially fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal romance/urban fantasy written by authors of color (women and non-binary folks esp.), queer authors, and other such folks. I'm beginning to think I need a rule that says I won't read any paranormal romance/urban fantasy written by white women and published by a major publisher/press without three trusted sources first vetting it.
Why? Because the first book of 2012 is turning out to be disappointing. I thought it had promise, I really did. The guy who seemed like he'd be the love interest in the first chapter turned out to be the villain. When the villain begins stalking the heroine, she does all she can and it's made clear that stalking is wrong and creepy and evil! When someone implies it's her fault because she had coffee with the guy, she doesn't take that shit at all! The two main characters don't immediately fall into instant lust and want to fuck each other and mystically bond, they start out as distant acquaintances!
But then the fail started coming in. Describing a character as "East Asian in a dreamy way" (as opposed to the icky kind of East Asian?) and having the main male character get snarly at a bunch of cops for hitting on the main female after the stalker-villain destroys everything she owns, but then insisting she stay with him until she gets on her feet and mentally undressing her all the while.
I'm not sure I'm going to finish this book, hence the need for recs!
Oh, and any really great biographies/histories of non-white/non-European people or subjects would be great. Especially if they're written by non-white/non-European authors.
5.
I kind of want to start a discussion about self publishing and e-books, especially from the side of readers. How much do people out there read self-published books and ebooks? Where do you get them from, how do you find them, what appeals to you? Is the quality better, worse, the same as traditionally published material?
So, chime in if you like to let me know. How often do you read self-published vs. traditonally published books? Ebooks vs. paper books?
I've been meaning to ask these questions for a while, but well. See numbers 1-3 for reasons why.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-04 07:58 am (UTC)Describing a character as "East Asian in a dreamy way" (as opposed to the icky kind of East Asian?)
ugh. sounds like just another variation of "pretty/hot for a ____". Descriptions like these, especially if they're from the POV of a love interest, is one reason I have issues with some portrayals of POC/white relationships in romance books (well, possibly other genres too) written by white authors. I don't get the appeal of being with someone who thinks of me like that. (Ditto heroes who are misogynists.)
I haven't been reading urban fantasy lately, though I do have Marjorie Liu's latest waiting to be read. And I'm looking forward to Alaya Johnson's Wicked City.
I think the only self-published author I've read so far is Courtney Milan, who writes historical romance. She started out in traditional publishing and decided to self-publish to see if she could make money by lowering the price of her e-books and, when possible, not drm-ing them. And I think she made a blog post too about wanting to write about people that most historical romance doesn't care about/won't publish, so hopefully that means not just rich, titled, straight, white people. I like her sensibilities/online persona (I think she's part Asian too, though all her characters have been white).
Since I got my e-reader, last year, I haven't read much paper books -- it's mainly only comics that I read that way now. I much prefer reading on the e-reader because I don't get paper cuts, don't lose my page, can make the font gigantic, can carry a lot of books & fanfic with me... I would buy SO MANY books at ~2.99, so I hope self-publishing endeavours like Milan's work out.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-04 05:26 pm (UTC)I mean, come on. Why even make that statement like it's a good thing? If the author intended to address it or acknowledge it's skeeviness or something, maybe. But if it's just a throwaway descriptor why not say, "He had East Asian heritage, was very muscular and handsome". Ugh.
Ooh, thanks for reminding me about the Johnson book, because that is on my "find if possible" list.
Thanks for the ebook opinion. That makes another in the "mainly ebooks and yay fanfic on ereaders!" column. I've gotta get one of my own one of these days.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-04 06:18 pm (UTC)It sounds like one of those thoughtless, off-hand comments that has Unfortunate Implications that the author just didn't think about or possibly thought they did address it adequately later on, like with the white privilege comment. Which is one reason why I feel like certain, privileged POVs are not always necessary to the story. Or, rather, that I understand people like this exist and it's 'realistic' to portray them this way and whatnot, but that doesn't mean I want to read about them, even if they have a Learning Moment.
I do like that AO3 has made downloading fics very easy.