TheBanyanTree: How To Be A Writer.2

[Monique Colver]

Second in a series from:  http://moniquecolver.blogspot.com

Today someone sent me an email asking if his wife would like my book.

How do you respond to that? (By you, I mean me, obviously.) How do I know?
Maybe she only likes romance, or is a 50 Shades sort of person (in which
case . . . oh, never mind). Maybe she will, maybe she won’t. I can’t be so
pinheaded as to not realize that there may be people who have read it and
don’t like it – they just don’t tell me about it afterwards. Far as I know,
everyone loves it and it should be a bestseller.

(No, it’s not, but publishing being what it is, things are what they are.)

(By the way, I hate clichés such as, “things are what they are,” “at the
end of the day,” “where’s my machete when I need it?”)

This is the same guy who a week ago expressed some amazement that the book
has done as well as it has. Really? You need to say to someone, “I’m just
surprised it’s done as well as it has.”

This from someone who knows me only from an email list and hasn’t read any
of my work. I just said, “Eh,” and moved on. This is what you do with
comments like that, unless you want to engage in a discussion of everything
you stand for. I wanted to respond, “And I am surprised that you’re still
breathing. I can’t imagine the amount of thought you must put into staying
alive every day.”

But I didn’t.

After today’s question about whether or not his wife would like it (in
which my response was, “I don’t know, other people seem to,”) he responded
again with this gem:

“I guess I was just thinking that if it wasn’t nice to the psych health
care field she might not like it, but then again that doesn’t seem likely.
I’ll pick up a copy in the next week or so.”

Yes. My entire point was to be nice to members of a profession to the
exclusion of telling the actual story. Or, alternatively,

No, my entire point was to be mean to members of a profession to the
exclusion of telling the actual story.

Sheesh. People. I hadn’t actually considered whether I was being nice or
mean to people in the psych health field because that’s not what it’s
about. It’s about friendship, and finding hope when it seems there is none.
It’s also about what we’re willing to do to save others. Those are the
themes. Mental illness is just the backdrop.

It’s an important backdrop, but there it is all the same. I wish people in
the psych field would read it. Or students studying in that field, because
it’s a real-life case study of what happens without a safety net, and a
first-person account of what is actually in the head of someone with mental
illness, someone who’s desperately trying to put his life back together.

Some days I want to move on, but then I realize I really do want people to
know this story, so I press on with talking about it.

When you’re a writer, you have options. You can write about anything and
there’s a niche for it. And if there isn’t, you can make one for yourself,
if you can find enough people interested in what you’re writing about. You
can put as much of yourself into your work as you want. Sometimes I write
to entertain, and sometimes I write to inform, and sometimes I write
because otherwise my head will explode.

My husband has asked that I please not explode. It’s very difficult to get
brain out of the carpets.

The choice is ours. Some people who have read the book feel like they know
me, and that’s all right with me. (Though they could email me more often –
it wouldn’t hurt to keep in touch.) I didn’t hold back, and this is a story
that’s so very important to me.

When we write, we take little pieces of ourselves and we stick it on the
paper, and we hope people like what we’ve done with it. Our writing is not
us, and we have to keep ourselves separate from it, but it is a part of us.
So tend it with care and nurture it, and don’t give up on it, even when
you’re certain that would be the best course of action.

I myself give up at least once a week, but then I keep going anyway. I
don’t know if it’s because I’m slow to catch on or determined, but since
the result is the same, it doesn’t matter. Ignore the people who want a
nice little story that won’t offend anyone, and go with what you want to
write. Use your own pieces of yourself.



Monique Colver
An Uncommon Friendship: a memoir of love, mental illness, and friendship
Now available at
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Monique+Colver>
and
at www.AnUncommonFriendship.com <http://anuncommonfriendship.com/>
www.ColverPress.com
monique.colver at gmail.com
(425) 772-6218