Empire of Dirt: Writing with Scrivener and sending off the first draft

At last. It’s only been six weeks but it feels like forever. Four weeks to write the draft, nearly two to edit it and make sure I had everything in order. I think I’ve earned some time in Skyrim, although I have this sneaky little feeling I’ll be up and working on Amnar again tomorrow morning.

This really was much easier with Scrivener. I can’t believe I used anything else to write with, especially when I got to the last chapter. Everything had to be wrapped up in the right way. All the way through editing, I made notes in the inspector for the last chapter, which helped ensure I got my big reveal sorted out.

The screen capture gives you an idea of what it looks like. I don’t usually write with the Inspector open, but I do if I need the document notes. Scrivener is as good as you make it, and the more you use the facilities, the more you benefit. As a standard practice, I lock out the left-hand pane, which contains the chapter summaries. This makes it much easier to check what happens in each chapter.

The main advantage of Scrivener is having everything in one file. I back up to Dropbox, which is easily done, and the most up to date versions of Scrivener include a template making it very easy to transform your work into a single PDF file. Never have I appreciated that as much as I did today when I sent it off.

I’ve had an email from Daren saying he likes the title and asking for an up to date chapter-by-chapter, which I’ll have to do up from my Inspector notes tomorrow morning. Tonight, however, is a chance to let myself decompress a little bit before the next stage.

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Empire of Dirt: The Xbox arrives… the death of my productivity?

Let me… tell you a tale. The last time I played a computer game (until yesterday) was sometime back in the early nineties, when people either had a Sega Master System or a Nintendo thing.

We had a Sega Master System and all I did was collect all the rings on the first level of the Sonic the Hedgehog game. Before that, there was a version of Knightmare that we had on the BBC Master, one of those games made up entirely of text that you read through and then selected options. Oh yes, and a game called Citadel and another called, weirdly, Imogen.

I spent most of my teens being such a student that I didn’t play games. I just did homework and read books. And then I grew up and the gaming world got away from me. I never had the confidence, to be honest. Of course, most of my friends are gamers, and the one thing I hear over and over from Amnar readers is how great it would be as a game.

So… I cracked. After seeing two friends playing Portal 2 on their Xbox 360 I went and got one of my own over the weekend. Goodbye productivity, hello Skyrim!

It took ALL DAY to set up. It was like a really bad, really irritating Aperture test just to get a Windows Live ID and then get the Xbox to recognise it. It took a few attempts to redeem my Gold Membership token because it helpfully kept logging me out of Xbox Live and I needed to be logged in to redeem the token.

Not only that, but it has a strict order of priorities for new starters, and if your priorities don’t match theirs, you end up getting a bit lost. I had people requesting to be my friend while the Xbox wanted to explain how my controller worked. In the middle of all this I had to go and by an HDMI cable for my fussy TV, which doesn’t like registering anything that isn’t using HDMI automatically.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I had to get my hair cut as well, as it’s been too long and needs taming again. That was fun, but more of a distraction from the endless “How would you like your avatar to look?” and “Do you want to give your credit card details to yet another massive corporation?” type questions.

I have IDs coming out of my ears.

Still, I got it going and spent a happy evening being relentlessly killed in Bastion. The neighbours must think I’m crazy. Obviously, I talk to the game.

“KID! Could you face the right way when you’re shooting at things!”

“Shut up, Rucks.”

“Well if you will stand over there and get repeatedly hammered, you ARE going to end up falling off the world!”

Although my favourite so far was when Rucks cheerfully narrated my improving skill: “The Kid soon learned to loose an arrow straight and true. And then he fell to his death.”

Which was largely about me shooting something then accidentally pressing Evade and hurling myself into the abyss.

Somebody asked why I got an Xbox and not a PSwhatever, and the answer is that when I first asked about this on Twitter, all the friends I knew best (and were most likely to play games with) said they had an Xbox. I think only one person mentioned having a PSwhatever. So, Xbox it is.

The problem now, as I have been warned is: Whither my productivity? I’ve got a book to edit, I’ve just paid my last installment to Daren, so I’m onto The Next Stage of the Empire of Dirt project.

I’ve decided to set up some rules. On a work day, the Xbox 360 does not get turned on until I’ve finished my work day. No playing on my lunch break, or my late break. Play starts when I’m done for the day, and not before.

Of course, weekends are a different matter. I can play on Sunday after I’ve been for a training walk (I’m preparing for the Oxfam 100km training walk next year), and then I can do what I like with my day.

It’s very, very tempting to turn it on and just have a little play around, but I know that will kill me. I have 95,000 words left to edit on Empire and they aren’t going to get done if I spend all my time being burnt by dragons in Skyrim or falling off things in Bastion. Of course, once the book’s been edited and sent off to Daren and the proof-readers, I can do all the gaming I like…

Edit: I’ve been told by one of my more gamenerd friends that there was no such thing as a Nintendo Playstation. I have no idea. The Sega was my brother’s. But I remember there was a Sega thing and a Nintendo thing and there was a lot of tension between who had what thing. Just as all those PSwhatever people have suddenly come out of the woodwork demanding to know why I bought an Xbox.

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Empire of Dirt: Editing begins

Here we are at last. I have a finished first draft of 107,000 words, all neatly set out in Scrivener. This is where the editing starts. It might be the most difficult part of writing (aside from the final draft, if there has to be one). Self-editing is fraught with horrors.

Now, I wanted to write a post about world-building specific to Empire, but I’m not sure how to do it without giving away details. I’ve been asked in the past about world-building, and the attitude of non-writers is that this is somehow a separate activity to writing the book(s).

Not at all. I have to admit, I didn’t realise exactly how much the world of Empire would be shaped during writing, how it would start to come to life. I began as I did with Amnar 13 years ago, when I just had the basic “you’ve got nine Capillites and they’ve all got Servants” structure.

The idea behind Empire was that it would be basically set around the current era. However, I started to have more and more ideas as the world developed. I realised that the plan I had worked out was fine, but it wasn’t enough. The more I ventured into thriller territory, the more the world grew and became more complicated.

I’m still getting ideas now. They don’t need a lot of re-writing to incorporate, but it just goes to show that writing a book doesn’t begin with the idea and end with the last sentence of the final paragraph. I need to speak with Daren about a few of these things, but I’m pretty sure most of them are fine.

So… back to editing.

I’m editing backward. I’ve gone back to the first chapter with Daren’s initial notes in mind and started with the last sentence, working back to the beginning. The idea is that if I go backward, I won’t get tempted to read through and think, “Yeah, that’s all fine.”

I’m trying to find ways of enjoying it. That might be… misguided, but I’ve got 107,000 words to go through, and it’s at least a week’s work ahead of me. While writing the first draft is about enjoying the story, this is about getting to play with language, making sure the words are right.

I’m getting my hair done later (I hate doing that, but my hair really is getting too long) so I have a few breaks… and my new Xbox might even show up. Watch my productivity plummet…

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Empire of Dirt: The first draft is done (reprise)

The Palace, by James Chadderton

I spent all weekend off, doing crafting and learning to knit (I’ll explain about that in another post). I wasn’t happy with the last two chapters as written, and I figured I’d come back to them.

I think I can tell from word count when I haven’t done my best with a piece. The last two chapters were too short, and I hadn’t taken time to build the tension and really work through the big reveal properly.

Leaving it two days was about right. I think I was a bit nervous about ending it, knowing that the last two chapters have to do a lot of resolution work for the characters, as well as suggest new possibilities for the future (not that I’m planning sequels, this book works nicely as a stand alone). And just because I’d had such a clear idea of how I wanted it to end visually, it was hard to sit down and do the writing.

I took off to the gym this morning, and came up with enough to get going on the last two chapters. It also worked through the nerves I had about finishing. I got both chapters finished this afternoon, but it’s pretty much killed me. I’ve gone The Bourne Identity on and then it’s time for a bit of Zombieland.

Tomorrow, I start editing in preparation to send it all off to Daren. He’s emailed to say he’s exited to read it. Part of me is nervous, but part of me is still so excited by having written the book, and just the thrill of the story, that it hasn’t really sunk in that this is it, the big bit of the work is done now.

I don’t know how much will need to be redone, but I’m pretty proud of it so far. I’m even looking forward to doing the editing, amazingly enough. It’s not often I get to say that. For now, though, I have to finish with a huge bundle of thanks to all the people on Twitter (especially the pre-emptive #EmpireofDirtFanboyClub) and all my friends for cheering me on.

That felt a bit like a failed Oscars speech. It’s definitely time to stop this and watch Zombieland. Next time I’ll talk about the knitting, and how I’ve finally caved in and got myself an Xbox 360.

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Empire of Dirt: The first draft is done

When I first signed up to this little adventure, I though I’d be looking at a finished first draft of Empire of Dirt sometime around December. I’m not entirely sure why, but I decided not to put so much expectation on my shoulders.

Then I got writing. I get asked how I manage to write so fast, and although I could give lots of technical reasons like having been practicing for years or being very disciplined, I think the truth is, I really enjoy doing it.

I went to a friend’s birthday party in the middle of writing, and met another author who works in non-fiction. When A said, “She’s a writer,” her fellow friend looked at me and said, “You must have the tidiest flat in the world.”

She described how she avoids writing by doing pretty much anything else, including cleaning her apartment. I sympathised; when I was doing my PhD I had the cleanest bathroom ever.

But right now, the flat is a mess. I’ve managed to do laundry because that largely does itself, but everything else tends to go to pot a bit when I’m writing. I get very wrapped up in it, and my reality shrinks to writing and doing things that help the writing happen, like going to the gym and running on the treadmill until my feet are blistered but I’ve got the next two chapters sorted in my head.

And that’s probably the main reason why I write quickly. I just love doing it. Of course, the first draft will need editing and I’m not happy with the last two chapters at all. Finishing off a book like that is awkward, as I want to keep it all tight, but as it’s a mixture of action that needs precise choreography, and a big reveal that has to be played right, it’s difficult to get that done well.

I’m taking the next couple of days off to think about it. I have party costumes to work on for Thanksgeeking and a friend’s wedding, and then it’s into editing time. Nice, though, to have the first draft there and done.

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“My charity depends on feats of pointless running”

I did a crazy thing this week. Two crazy things, in fact. I spent all weekend saying that I wouldn’t really want to run a marathon because, well, 26.2 miles? Running? I used to run a lot but I’ve been obsessed with other kinds of fitness lately.

Then, of course, I entered the ballot for the London Marathon 2013. AND agreed to do a 100km Trailwalk for Oxfam. Because I’m mad, obviously. This was the week when I decided, probably after everybody else had noticed, that the fitness thing really has gone beyond doing what the government recommends and has become An Interest.

I’m not sure how fitness is An Interest. I’d have thought it was a bit like putting down that you have sex or clubbing as Interests on internet dating sites, a clear sign that you probably struggle with conversations after the early “Hello”-based stages.

Turns out, there’s a lot of science behind being really fit, and somehow, I’ve started to enjoy it. When I got back into going to the gym after not leaving the house for a while, it was because I felt I needed to do it. In that guilty way a lot of people do, that they should do it, so they do it resentfully.

Then I started to enjoy it. I learnt a lot about exercise and mental health, exercise and not getting dementia, exercise and blah blah blah. Exercise comes close to being a panacea, so it’s a shame a snake oil salesman can’t bottle the stuff. In any case, I got a PT, started taking it all A Bit Seriously. Now, at least, I can explain to non-fitness friends that I do it because I’m going to do the London Marathon and walk across the South Downs for 30 hours.

Of course, I might not get through the ballot, but even if I don’t there’s always the Manchester Marathon. I’d rather do London, though. It’s not like the distance is any different, but you know. People have actually heard of London. Often when I talk to friends abroad about where I live they frown and say, “So, is that a bit of London, then?”

All this means doing a lot more training. This is probably A Good Thing, since the rest of the time I spend sitting down, and nothing justifies sitting down more effectively than being very active when you stand up. I have never loved sitting down so much as I did today. The news that I’m going to do marathons and epic walks has inspired my PT to new heights of torture.

I managed to get a chapter of Empire of Dirt done this morning (I now have two more to write), and then bounded off expecting the usual legs-workout with a lot of squatting and deadlifting heavy weights. We did that, for half an hour. Then my PT decided this wasn’t punishment enough, and we moved on to doing what he calls “MMA stuff”. That might be a technical term, but it’s all the rage at the gym right now.

This involves jumping up onto high things, running up and down a lot very fast, pushing heavy objects around very fast, and whacking things with weighted sticks. They have these weighted barbells, and the first exercise I was given to do was to whack a punchbag with a stick. No, I’m not kidding you here. My PT told me this was a transverse workout for my abs.

About three whacks in, I realised the only way to get serious about this was to get angry about something. I spent the weekend watching a Game of Thrones marathon at G’s house. Joffrey Lannister might be the most evil thing ever to have got onto an uncomfortable throne too early. Every episode he outdoes himself. I didn’t think it was possible to get more horrible than he is.

So could there be anything in the world more satisfying than imagining that the punchbag was Joffrey (even the name is irritating – there isn’t even anybody called Joffrey on Made in Chelsea – it would be a step too far). That got me through having to whack the bag to oblivion. It didn’t help much with the jumping onto the high thing, or the pushing the heavy thing up and down the studio at a run. By the time I finished I was prepared to sleep on the mats for an hour.

Somehow – I really don’t know how – I got another chapter done this afternoon. I only have two more to do until I finish the first draft. I’ve got a proofreader for it, but I’m still ridiculously terrified of sending it down to Daren. His last email commented that I write very fast. That was in response to telling him I was two thirds of the way through, over the weekend. Now I’ve got 6000 words to the end.

I’ve made a lot of changes to the basic chapter-by-chapter I sent him, so the book rockets through a lot of tension, and even a pencil-based miniature revolution, but hopefully, he’ll still like it. Meanwhile, I have a race to prepare for, and a walk. What have I done?

(The title comes from a Jeremy Hardy News Quiz quote. It really doesn’t get more middle class than that if I had a daughter called Hermione who played the cello at three.)

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Empire of Dirt: Halfway there

I’m halfway through. It took an insane weekend of writing, to get from a third to halfway, but Empire of Dirt is now as near to 52,000 words as makes no difference. In order to get through, what with sudden panic attacks and episodes of anxiety, I write a chapter, rest for a few hours, then do another, and so on. Being able to walk on a treadmill to release the tension really helps.

It’s all going wonderfully well, all things considered. However, I’ve run into a problem. The plan I had just wasn’t tense nor exciting enough in practice, so the big drama of my thirtieth chapter happened in my seventeenth.

Oops.

This is the thing. I’ve been giving myself a bit of a hard time over not sticking to my plan, but I recall the early days of Amnar were very much the same. I started out with a very basic idea for a world, and it grew up through writing. You don’t get all your ideas at once. It takes time to build, and building is easiest when you write.

And this is, after all, the first draft. I think I can grant myself a few errors.

The world is growing rapidly as I write, so I will need to go back and fill in details for the later sections of the book eventually. That’s what second and third drafts are for.

I worked so hard over the weekend, my PT recommended I take a day off and have a DVD marathon instead. Given his work ethic, I decided to take him seriously. I spent most of today watching bad to really bad horror movies (my favourite guilty pleasure after really bad reality TV shows).

I’d planned not to do anything with Empire today, but of course, the minute I get anywhere near relaxing, it kicks off again. I’ve rewritten the 15 chapters of the next third of the book, hopefully with a lot more action and energy and opportunities for things to happen.

Now, I have plenty to get on with tomorrow, and hopefully the energy to do it.

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Olympic advertising

Are you sick of the Olympics? I’m sick of the Olympics and there’s still a hundred days to go until they even start. But I’m sick of them. I really am.

Now, let me get this straight. I’m not sick of the concept of the Olympics. I quite like to watch people who are very good at a thing, whether it’s throwing themselves or other objects about a place, or running very fast or for a long time, or playing tennis or hoovering an ice rink, do that thing.

I appreciate that these people have the kind of discipline and dedication that turns them into elite athletes. I’d like to see the fruits of years of work and training and eating exactly the right thing. I’d like to cheer them when they achieve their dreams, regardless of the nation they represent.

What I’m tired of is the advertising. In another sphere I’m tired of the corporate and political bullshit that has surrounded the Olympics in London for the last however long and the seemingly endless articles produced revealing that the whole thing is being run by Evil Corporate People. They won’t pay musicians to work, apparently, will ferry dignitaries around in petrol-guzzling monstrosities, demand that people buy tickets for their children who are not even born yet, and various other terrible things.

Not to mention that the biggest sporting event in the world is being sponsored by the two biggest producers of Shit You Shouldn’t Eat If You Want To Be Healthy. You won’t be able to upload videos or pictures if you are able to get tickets to the event without having to sell your vital organs for a decent seat, the whole thing is turning into a grand exhibition of branding. It’s not about the sports, it’s about selling the product.

And this is why I’m bored. I am so sick of BUY THIS BECAUSE OLYMPICS! Are other countries getting this? “So and So can throw a javelin across a field. Therefore you should trust her advice on facial skincare. OF COURSE.”

Moisturiser? Seriously? I mean, I could understand sports drinks, sports shoes, sports clothing, gym memberships, pool memberships, sports channels all being sold on the basis that they have some connection to the Olympics. Because, you know, it’s entirely possible that people might take the advice of somebody like Usain Bolt on a recovery drink because that’s something he probably has a good deal of experience using in a professional capacity.

But I’m not going to buy a moisturiser because a woman who can throw a pointy stick a long way uses it. I wonder: Are there really people wandering about the UK looking at things and going “Look! The Olympic symbol! I must buy that product NOW!” Because that’s a little bit scary.

Everything is now sold with an Olympic connection, with the exception, so far, of pet foods and cars. Usain Bolt is currently pretending to be Richard Branson and trying to get me to buy his broadband (no thanks, that’s the type my mentor has and it hasn’t worked properly in four weeks), and running across London to demonstrate the Awesome Power of Visa.

Meanwhile, even disinfectant is sold with an Olympic link. “We sponsor the Olympics” says the advert at the end. You’ve just advertised a floor cleaner. A cleaner for lino. Somehow this doesn’t inspire Olympic dreams. It just reminds me that I really need to get the Dyson out and go around the living room before I drown in my own dust.

It’s getting exhausting. As the 100 days moment has just passed, they’ve had documentaries on TV and big special reports in the newspapers about it being 100 days until the Olympics start. They haven’t even begun and already there are documentaries. Normally, things have to actually happen before we start dedicating that kind of energy and attention to them.

Meanwhile, the Olympic torch is heading around Britain. I’m happy for the people involved but what I read yesterday in the Graun suggests its your typical British jobsworth nightmare. They have mock torchbearers. Mock torchbearers? And because we’re British and tend to be a bit lacklustre in our enthusiasm about things, they have special trucks full of people sponsored to be happy by, yes, the big sponsors of the events who get a lot of publicity at an event for the fittest people on the planet, encouraging us to eat food that kills us.

I just want the next hundred days to be over. I want to watch the SPORT. I just hope I haven’t had to go and live in a nuclear bunker* to escape the adverts in the meantime.

*Writing apocalyptic fiction has this kind of effect on a person.

UPDATE: Charlie Brooker says it as well, only much more funnily, or funnier.

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Empire of Dirt: I can has evocative verbs?

Very early on in the developmental stages of Empire I considered writing it entirely in LOLspeak. Imagine a post-apocalyptic world entirely populated by cats in search of a cheeseburger.

Meanwhile, in the real world, nothing makes me more anxious than a critique of my work. No, it’s more than that. Since my brain happily re-writes everything as criticism, an assessment of the first chapter of Empire by Daren was always going to be nerve-wracking.

One part of me feels daft about it. After all, I’ve been through this a thousand times both for my fiction and academic work, I should be used to it by now. But every time is the first time. Even worse, he sent me an email yesterday afternoon telling me he was writing up the notes and would get back to me later on in the day.

It was like waiting for my degree results, it really was. And no amount of telling myself that it was FINE and that it was NOT the end of the world would calm me down, so I had two hours of sweating it out while I waited for the notes. Lizard brain and human brain were definitely at odds, which made things that much worse.

As it happened, there was nothing to worry about. Out of three thousand words of writing I got notes on about 500 words in all. The prose is rather unfocused, which I was aware of. I have a bad habit of using scene-setting sentences to open paragraphs but not really explaining them properly within that paragraph.

The second problem was specific to that chapter and then the third was a remark that I tend to use the rather dull ‘to be’ rather than evocative verbs. I’ve written a note to myself to USE EVOCATIVE VERBS from now on.

The whole thing has worked out very well. I’m a third of the way through the first draft and I think I might finish it in May. All this has pleased the mentor no end and he’s let me know that it is very nice to have his job made easier like this. It’s done tons for my flagging confidence, as well.

I’m still trying to decide whether I write anything today. I’d planned two days off to recuperate and celebrate being a third of the way through. I’d also hit a massive cliffhanger and wanted time to work out how to proceed with the next chapter as it’s quite important that it’s done right.

At the moment, I think I will have a first draft by the end of May, which I presume is rather faster than he’s used to his writers working. It all depends very much on how quickly I can write and how difficult it is to do the more complicated thriller sections of the book.

In the meantime, I have lolcats to play with and The Last Exorcism to watch. I have no idea where I get my taste for exorcism horror, but it might end up being a book at some point in the future. When I’ve written more Amnar, and finished Empire, obviously.

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Time to Change: We won’t talk about “why”

I’m taking a day off. I’ve been working on Empire of Dirt solidly since last Friday. It’s ironic, isn’t it. I cheerfully say in a post that I struggle to work on weekdays because symptoms are worse, then go on to spend the next few days writing constantly. I’m about a third of the way through Empire now and as much as I’m loving it, I feel like a day off.

I was coasting about the internet, and happened across an article that led to Leslie Chapman’s blog on psychoanalysis. That brought me to a post about ‘the truth of depression‘. He was commenting on yet another article that interviewed people on the subject of their depression, and was curious that none of them appeared to be interested in why they became depressed.

This is entirely an opinion piece. As a good skeptic I would usually look to study after study to back up my thoughts, but I just thought I would throw this out there because it is pertinent to something I’ve been looking at in my own life recently, as I’m in therapy and that therapy has been very much about the “why” behind my own disorders.

There are two points that are relevant here. The first is that as mental illness and mental health issues have become more prominent, there has been a tendency to refer to a chemical model, a model that says it could happen to anybody, that it’s nobody’s fault. Why? I think it’s reflected in something somebody said to me when I admitted I had DPD with generalised anxiety.

“What? You mean you’re just crap at dealing with stress, then?”

Unlike physical illness, mental health problems come with this massive unsaid thing: that it’s a personal failing. That you’re somehow weak, inadequate, can’t cope, fall apart when the chips are down. You’re unreliable because you’ll fold up and break when it gets hard. We still live in a society that values being emotionally a bit distant (some people will claim we’re all public emotional wrecks, but that’s on TV and in magazines, I don’t think it’s necessarily prevalent everywhere).

This kind of toughness, this “don’t talk about it” attitude where you’re regarded as brave and strong if you are dealing with terrible things by never mentioning them and getting on with stuff as though nothing has happened, is what makes it difficult to talk about mental illness. The solution big organisations wanting to promote a more open and accepting attitude have come up with is to emphasise mental illness as a chemical, physical, neurological problem.

If it’s essentially another organ gone a bit wonky, and nobody could be expected to do anything about it, then it isn’t the sufferer’s fault, they can’t be seen as a failure. I still feel, deep down inside, that I should be tougher, that the free-floating anxiety and depersonalisation is a bit like epic failure as a human being. It’s not helped that occasionally I run into people who take exactly that attitude. And it’s simple: they don’t know why I have it.

That leads us to the second point. It’s not easy to talk about, or to explore, why. There are whys. There are things, buried in your past, in the way you were raised, in things that happened to you, that you learn not to talk about. Even when, in therapy, you finally do open the door to that place, it can be hard. It took me sixteen sessions to discuss why. The real why, not to superficial why.

These are not the kind of things that you can discuss with somebody who hears you mention that you’ve had depression, anxiety, or even DPD (they usually start with “What the hell is that, anyway?”). They aren’t the kind of things you chat about in the pub, with just any old person. They are frequently things that leave deep open wounds that never properly heal, wounds that you carry around with you, trying to avoid touching, things that evoke feelings of humiliation, worthlessness, even hopelessness about your future.

From a developmental standpoint, and as my therapist says, there’s nothing wrong with going through these things and coming through them with mental processes that don’t work brilliantly, or that lead you into mental illness. We all react differently to things, and when I said I had read of somebody who’d been through something similar to me and seemed to be fine, she said, “She’s probably hiding it, just like you did.”

You need a safe space to even start talking about these things that may have led you into whatever you’re struggling with now. I think there’s a reluctance even to start because if there’s one thing about mental health problems that seems universal it’s the feeling of being a failure, and we worry that looking into the causes is going to lead to us being branded, for all time, with that big red F.

After that, you carefully pick friends you can discuss things with. When I made my choice, I think my friend saw what was coming and paved the way for my ‘confessional moment’, as it were, by introducing the subject himself. The relief was immense. Somehow, it normalised it for me and made it something I didn’t have to fight with anymore. And that is part of recovery.

As much as the big campaigns want us to talk about mental health and share our experiences, we’re always faced with the fact that we’re very vulnerable when we do it, and that some things we just cannot say to just anybody. As much as it is great to start discussing mental illness and change the stigmas associated with it, there are some things that you just don’t want everybody to know. And that might well be your real “Why”.

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