I’ve never admitted how badly I was bullied in school or what really went on and I’ve never talked about how screwed up I became as a result of it all. So here it is, the darker side of why I write…also…advance apologies if this isn’t the best writing. I have only lightly edited it as if I look at it too long, I’ll end up never sharing it. It is somewhere between why I write and general blogging…my life and my writing are 100% intertwined with each other.

(Why Do I Write – Part One)

What mattered then, what matters now?

A lot of what I write is connected to matters I’m deeply connected with in life. I guess because I started writing to escape the world, and to create a world where I had friends (I know, so sad.), what matters hasn’t changed that much:

• Social alienation
• Social stigmatism
• Invisible illness
• Fitting in, having friends
• Living life to the full and doing everything 
• Falling in love/knowing what love is

There was a whole lot of darkness in my mind growing up…and still is…and I’ve always loved pushing my characters into really dark situations, messing with their sanity and generally being a cruel master to them. Some of that is dealing with my own crap I know, but then, why not use what I’ve got stashed away? I hope one day I get to writing some positivity, like how it feels to fall in love and all that vomit inducing crap I was spurning in part one of this post.

I want people to see characters that can be forced to the deepest depths of hell and torment and find a way out. I want people to find characters that still find a will to live in a world that rejects them. And if I can pull it off, I want readers to know how much it fucking hurts to suffer at the hands of humanity. I think that’s why Elfen Lied is such a favourite of mine, even though it’s technically every genre I hate. The story speaks to me on so many personal levels and I can relate to Lucy/Nyu more so than any other character. The revelation of her story is masterfully done, as is the comparison of natures between Lucy and other characters who are exposed to similar fates.

It’s also why stories such as The Otori Tales, The Old Kingdom, Sword Art Online and Blue Exorcist have always been favourites of mine through all of time; and bands such as Evanescence and Within Temptation, and OSTs such as Bleach by Sagisu Shiro are always music I go back to. They all share similar concepts and emotions that mean so much to me. I always go back to them when I’m getting back into writing because they connect my past and my present and remind me of everything.

Music keeps my memories safe and preserved, helps me wake up/go to sleep and integrate with the world, and is a part of every moment of my life. I literally start to go insane if I go too long without music. Because of how intertwined with my life and my thought processes music is, it’s also an integral part of my creativity and writing/editing. Pretty much every song has a memory or emotion attached to it from when I first heard it, so if I want to go to a certain point in my life and remember something, that song goes on.

How do I deal with writer’s block?

There’s no real hard and fast answer to this, and I’m not sure many writers dealing with the total writer’s block/writer apathy have an answer for this. The main thing I do is switch off from other writers. The last thing I need to see when I’m in the doldrums is a horde of creative people telling me that I’m not a writer if I’m not writing every day, or that there’s no such thing as writer’s block.

I’ll also do something else. During the summer – if in Wales, it stops blowing a gale and raining for longer than 2 days – I’ll get out in the garden. That’s a double bonus as I find caring and nurturing plants is good for procrastination and for caring for personal mental health. Likewise, going ham on unruly weeds is good for stress management.

Travel used to be a fantastic way of getting over some block in my writing. Hell, I’d say this is the *absolute* best method for me. Sadly it’s also an unavailable option due to atrocious health, raging anxiety and total lack of funds. Also, I drive now, so I don’t ever get to enjoy being a passenger in the back seat.

Between mid-October and late April, I’m cooped up indoors (because cold, wet, and utterly awful outside…) so I tend to default to gaming as a way to cope/deal with writer’s block. There’s nothing better than being in an open world RPG/MMORPG to help counter the growing sense of frustration when words won’t flow. It’s also the most likely way of me coming across an idea that sparks an idea off, or suddenly makes something in my plot make sense since I don’t go outside. The downside is starting off a new RPG. I’ve given Fallout 76 way too much of my time since I picked it up after Christmas.

Something I picked up at the end of last years is the Writer’s Block book by Jason Rekulak which is a beautiful little cube of 786 ideas and prompts for writing. I’ve done a couple so far and do find it a really good way to challenge myself and my writing style – I did one recently that ended up in first person narrative and present tense which was interesting. (Check out Writer’s Block posts here.)

I do find journaling sometimes helps, though it can also hinder if I get into things too deep, so I tend to leave a lot of journaling for utter off periods when I have nothing to lose. Like writing fiction, there’s so little in my life that there isn’t even any point in keeping a journal.

Why I’m struggling to write now?

Two major core processes that kept me running: dreaming and writing. I can dream without writing, but I can’t write without dreaming; though I realise that may not make sense and I will probably do a separate post about dreaming and writing at another time as it may get lengthy.

As a child, I’d be sitting in the back of my parents’ car and stare out of the window as the landscape rolled by. Stories would ignite from the littlest spark – the way the sun glinted through trees, the lighting of the sky or seeing woodland on a hill. The music my parents listened to would set the pace of the story and within minutes of leaving our home town, there’d be some story or other taking control of my imagination. I don’t remember most of those idle daydreams, but daydreaming while travelling was something I kept up as long as I could. 

Now I drive and never get to be an antisocial passenger, I’ve completely lost this ability. I’ll glance amazing views around me and wonder what secrets they keep. And that’s it. The wilderness around me keeps her stories secret. Also, if I’m in the car with someone else, no matter how much I repeat “do you mind if I zone out for a bit?”; whoever I’m with will simply keep talking at me.

My main battle is that my health has forced me pretty much into total isolation in a tiny village in Wales that is best known for its absence of life and pretty much anything. (I mean, there’s a university, but in 3 years living here and even using the Starbucks on campus, I’ve seen like…8 students? Not even joking, I took my dad once and even he couldn’t believe how unpopulated it was.) So no new and fresh ideas here.

I hit this current block in August as things reached a whole new level of worse coupled with losing two good friends purely because my health was a problem to them. One, who has also been through mental health battles of their own even told me I freaked them out. Wonderful. Who needs enemies right? Suddenly any and all social interaction was null, my association with the world was gone and I completely ran out of ideas to use up. As it is, The Sirin Chronicles is largely based on concepts of social alienation and invisible illnesses, so it isn’t even like I could utilise this new situation to feed my work.

Also, every time I hit a setback and/or flare-up with my health, it takes me 2-3 months to recover. 2 months where I’m entirely unable to write or create, and another 2 months where I’ve been dragged out of my work and become totally disconnected from everything. By the time I’m getting myself back together again and about to dive into my writing, it’s time to repeat it all. Each time I get disconnected from my work, it becomes 100% more difficult to reconnect to it. The battle against brain fog (part of ME/CFS) is real too.
Describing real life things is hard some days.
Describing my fictional creations becomes impossible!

Where do I go from here?

I guess for now I still need to do some more soul searching and reminiscing of the past to find out what is lacking from my WIPs now… and trying to find the place I was in so I can start moving forward with my work again. And also pray for a miracle. I know something needs to change in my life, and no matter what I do, I always run into a locked door… though I’ll keep looking for one that opens for me. And keep writing, even if it’s just one word at a time.

I’ll also keep wishing that the fates will allow me a life before I’m old and decrepit.

Original article: Why Do I Write? (Pt2).

The response I got was fantastic, and mostly the suggestions were of remembering what inspired me right back at the beginning. Why inspired me? What was I watching and reading? What music was I into? Since then, I’ve been thinking about it a lot and trying to remember the person I was.  This is a challenge as I’ve spent the last 15 years suppressing my past and trying to forget all about high school and 6th form.

Still, I’ve been soldiering on with it, and maybe I have still forgotten a lot of my life, but it’s also made me realise just as much about my past and present self. This post turned into a bit of an epic, so I decided to split it and make it a two-parter. (Also, I haven’t finished part two as I really am trying to keep my madness and desolate feelings out of all of this.)

The world has changed, and change again and I’ve shed countless skins through every transition, yet a lot of who I am has always remained; the writer being a major part of my soul’s construction. How I perceived the world then and how I view it now hasn’t altered that much.

Something things have completely switched to opposites. Back then I was in love with love: think old Disney movies and the whole happily ever after thing. Now I’m a total cynic that wants to remember what the crazy feeling was, but also gets nauseated by the idea and would prefer some rage-filled future dystopian fiction.

Me then – playing The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Skyrim
Me now – Ruthlessly slaughtering my way through hordes of ghouls in Fallout 76, with Fallout 4 on standby.

To anyone who knew me growing up, I loathed first-person shooter games, PVP and post-apocalyptic settings. Yet here I am, trying to crowbar this crazy genre into my fantasy environment. And while my naïve, innocent self may have long been destroyed by the toxicity of this world; I still search for the beauty, love and purity within everything. I still believe in magic, even if my relationship with the arcane and the gods has changed. The child that was always daydreaming, creating stories, and looking for prince charming still there. In very opposite ways.

Why do I write, and when did I start writing?

I have been writing for as long as I can remember. Writing has always been such an integral part of my existence. Conjuring up stories from the landscape around me and summoning characters into being was easier than breathing (n.b. no idea why, but I’ve always had a tendency to forget to breathe. Whoever said it is impossible not to breath was wrong…) I can’t not write. I want to do a post at some point this year looking back at my older works and the worlds I created *shudder*.

When I’m not writing, it’s like madness and rage swell up inside me and start devouring at my sanity. So many voices of unwritten characters constantly clamouring at me from an unknown world; those of the characters whose fates are in my hands waiting for me to finish their stories. It is utter insanity. Every minute I’m not writing or working at writing in some way, it’s like I’m dying, and the characters fade away from me. Then there’s the fear I may lose them and their stories for good, and then what would I do with my life?

I first started writing A Dawn of Dreams back in 2006, and that was the first book I completely finished and stuck with. I was a teenager full of angst, an outsider…and I was in love with love. A Dawn of Dreams was also called Angelie I Demonie. It had(s) nothing to do with Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, I didn’t even know about him at the time, but I was in love with the song Inner Universe by Yoko Kano and Origa, and the original book title is literally the first three words of the song.

Back then, I was obsessed with anime and their soundtracks. I felt like my life made more sense watching them somehow, and the songs spoke to my heart. It’s over 10 years later and those songs I was in love with back then are still my favourites.

What inspires/d me?

I found inspiration everywhere as a child, and even in the throes of darkness as a teenager, I saw something in everything. Some of the most notice influences on my writing were holidays in Cornwall and the wild and rugged landscape of its coastline. I visited so many castles and Nation Trust properties as well as the many old towns that my mind was overflowing with stories and ideas.

I grew up on tales of Arthur and Excalibur, Mab and the Cornish Lady of the Lake, and the legends of pirates at Jamaica Inn. My brother and I would scour the caves whenever we could looking for treasure, which is when I first found crystals and fell in love with them.

Now I live in Wales and have been introduced to the Welsh Lady of the Lake.  I also have two lakes that I now need to visit. In all the years of crossing Bodmin Moor, I never made it to Dozmary Pool. And so far in three years in Wales, I’ve yet to make it to Myddfai and Llyn y Fan Fach either.

Tunisia was the other place that gave life to The Sirin Chronicles in particular. I fell in love with the country the first time I went out there, it was so vibrant and rich. There’s so much culture and history everywhere, and even new locations being discovered. (Tozeur had only recently been discovered the last time we went out into the Sahara – I need to go back since they have uncovered so much more of it.)

I remember being overpowered by the intoxicating fragrance of jasmine the first time I was out there, and the smell of the desert always behind everything else. Pralines were, and still are, one of the most amazing things I have ever tasted. Damn, everything out there was (and is) so full of flavour, colour and scent; unlike dreary wet Britain where everything is pallid in comparison.

Aside from travel, music and fiction have been pivotal for my imagination. I have a strange connection between writing, music, dreaming, and memory. I was in love with Evanescence, Within Temptation and Nightwish through my teenage years. Classical music and soundtracks were also a big part of what I listened to. Whenever I was dreaming or writing, there was always music.

One of the greatest, unplanned moments I’ve while writing was a scene towards the end of Dancing Shadows and Kneel For No Man by Ramin Djawadi came on. I was completely into my writing, and oblivious of the music in the background until I got to the end of the scene. That the piece of music had completely powered the detailing and the pacing of the scene.

I’m one of those writers where I have a plot, and I do automatic writing. Half the time, I’ve no idea what the outcome will be as I let my characters take total reign and tell me the story. This character gave me five minutes of uncertainty over her fate and I was shaking because of how the scene had unfolded.

I only hope what I felt writing that scene passes to the reader. When editing Dancing Shadows, the same thing happened. I got to that scene, got into and the same track came on whilst I was deep within the fabric of the scene. (My YouTube ‘Writing’ playlist has 756 videos in it which makes it all the more bizarre and wonderful that it happened twice.)

Books and other worlds helped me develop my own world. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia were the three most pivotal books in my younger years. They introduced me to complex fictitious worlds that drew the reader in. They taught me a different kind of magic, one where you can open a book and travel to a whole new world for so long as you read. I never saw words. With both reading and writing, as soon as I got into the flow of things, words vanished any everything became more real than life. The more I read and experienced that sensation, the more I wanted to create my own magic realm for other people to find and escape to.

I was also obsessed with manga and anime, especially the amazing world of Bleach. At the time I got introduced to it, there were 72 episodes and I watched every single one of them in 24 hours. I forgot that both sleep and school were a thing. (I also had a raging crush on Hitsugaya, which incidentally, is one of those things that hasn’t change between then and now.)

I got into anime about the same time I got into The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. A common theme of interest for me both then and now was of getting stronger and dealing with insane odds. In all the stories I love, the main element is one getting stronger. It’s something that mirrors my own life where, for various reasons, I’m always trying to get stronger and conquer my own battles and demons. It’s a theme I love toying with too; how far can I push my characters and can they overcome their fate or find a way to change it?

That’s also why I prefer automatic writing and letting my characters have some control in the first few drafts. Sometimes they’ll make it easier for both of us…other times they’ll come up with an incredible idea and phenomenal challenge and leave me to fix it. How do you kill an immortal? Their idea? GET AN EVEN MORE EVIL AND OVERPOWERED IMMORTAL. Thanks, guys.

What inspires me now is largely the same, though it is lacking somewhat due to my current health status. I don’t get out anywhere near as much as I wish I could to explore. Also, lacking friends in the immediate vicinity of where I live stifles my creativity. I haven’t got someone I can bounce ideas around with, or speculate over plots of other stories – Game of Thrones, a favourite to speculate over.

I’ve discovered in the last couple of years that not speaking a word is actually detrimental. It’s like not speaking means not thinking, and not thinking is not creating or problem-solving. As soon as I’m with people, ideas start flying around like crazy. It’s a shame that in a year, I’m only among company for a week or two, every few months. No joke, my life is spent in total isolation for 2+ months at a time. No conversations. No human interaction.

I’d love to say that in itself was a good story plot to work with, except that’s already 90% of The Sirin Chronicles and I want to include life to my work, not more death.

***

[Why Do I Write – Part Two]

Original article: Why do I Write? (Pt1).