Back Down the Rabbit Hole.

Months ago, I wrote a post about journeying through mental health. For me, being a writer is about sharing stories, about reaching out to other people with those stories, real and fictional. That post still stands as one of the most viewed posts in this blog, and if I managed to help one person or show one person they were not so alone in feeling that way, then the post was a success.

I wrote another blog post a couple of days back about how work has been getting me down lately. But that I'm also there a lot. So I've been trying to find some meaning in the workplace that sees me so much more than any of my friends and family. Because shouldn't there be meaning in something you are spending so much time doing?

I've been applying for internal positions within the workplace. I've been watching my stats and making sure I'm pretty much the best damned me I can be, and thinking that within a meritocracy those efforts will pay off.

Maybe they would, if I was in a meritocracy.

Unfortunately, I'm in a corporateocracy. And that seems to translate into 'high school for adults'.

I didn't really like high school the first time round. High school was... me not really understanding what was going on a lot of the time, except that there was a popular group and I was not in it. Like many of my friends these days, I was never really how to get in it. Maybe there was a special letter sent out to some peoples' homes, like for Hogwarts.

I escaped high school with as much as I could of me intact, having gotten out of it what I had come there for: My education.

I expect I'm supposed to say that I am getting out of work what I came there for: My money.

The work place seems to be another popularity contest but, other than that, things aren't as clear. I went in without a very clear idea of what I want to get out of it. At the beginning, it was something that was going to supplement the income of my household, but then my fiancee got a pay rise, and I had to think of what this work was doing for me. Independence, then. Or else something to keep me sane through writer's block, or just to keep me talking to other people who exist outside of my Word documents. Trouble is, my idea of what I'm doing there isn't clear enough, so I'm left without a clear aim of why I'm staying in this high school for adults.

And, as if that isn't enough, the black dog seems to be back to chase me down that familiar rabbit hole. I've been lucky. I've had a fairly clear couple of months there, so clear that I stopped even taking the St John's Wort that was such a life saver for me last December. I had a stellar last session with my counsellor who was pleased I was in a much better place than when I'd first come in. We've even had good news with my partner's cancer, though that's more his story to tell.

I suppose, with all the good things going on and moving forward around me, it makes sense for me to look inward; I'm no longer quite so needed to stand strong as a support for other people. And maybe that's the reason I'm a little bit more realistic and admitting that it's not just their upsets that are getting me down, but rather I'm not so happy with my own layout of life as I appear to be.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy being a writer and--while my job was low hours and low stress--I quite enjoyed work too. But I'm not where I want to be as a writer. Not yet. One book does not mean 'successful', and I'm looking forward to Revelry following after Gothic and getting to parade that new novel around like it's a new prize pony. Work was supposed to be there as a complement to my real work. It isn't. If I was writing my life as a story right now, work would be the main antagonist.

Here is me. I'm trying to do fantastically in both areas of my life, barely being mediocre in either one and trying oh-so-hard not to let depression get on top of me again like it did last year. Because I had a break, but it wasn't nearly long enough.

And so I write this post, to mark the day and make sure I start doing something about it before it gets worse.

Writing Genres and The Casual Vacancy.

This morning began with my partner calling that breakfast was ready from downstairs. Breakfast was a cheese, eggs and bacon sandwich with the kettle already boiled and ready for me to make any hot drink I desired.

Not a bad way to start the day.

It's now an hour later. I've yet to get out of my pyjamas, my fiancee is sitting next to me and working from home, I'm on my second Milo of the morning and I'm pleasantly surprised to find that I'm enjoying my read through of J. K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy.


Although it's incredibly obvious that this book is by the same author as the Harry Potter books, Rowling's writing is easy to get into. In The Casual Vacancy as well, there is no great battle between good and evil to push the plot along at the expense (in my opinion) of character. In Rowling's first novel for adults, the plot is the characters. The prologue of the book shows the last hours leading into the death of the central character. The plot of the novel is the people who are left in the town, and the way their lives have been changed in the wake of this central figure's death. The cast of characters are diverse. Dislikeable and sympathetic. Annoying but understandable. They range in age, race, class status. Rowling does a very good job of fleshing out what feels like a real small town in England.

This is not a fantasy novel or a children's book, and it represents a great diversion from the style of books she is best known for.

I've gotten very used to writing urban fantasy and young adult novels. The urban fantasy / paranormal romance series in particular, with the release of Gothic. But I know that I have almost complete versions of the second and third books Revelry (coming very soon from Leap of Faith publishing) and Smoke and Mirrors, so perhaps it is time to pause and take up a different genre of writing for a while...

In a conversation I had with my partner before Christmas, when I was having a terrible time with my mental health, I mentioned the difficulties I was having with writing the fourth book in the above Shadows of Melbourne series.

Him: Have you been writing anything at all lately?

Me: Not really. It's easier to pay attention to the real life job. All I have to do is rock up there, not cry and stay there till the end of the shift. There's a manual we follow, we've gone through training to understand the manual and anything outside of that I can transfer or ask someone else for further advice. With writing thought, I have to make things up as I go along, things have to fit together and if I get to a road block, I'm the only one who can unblock the damned thing.

Him: What if you weren't making things up as you went along? You've always liked journal writing and you've had a bunch of interesting things happen in your life. I'd really love to read that. What if you were to go through your old journals and write up a narrative around them?

Me: .....

My partner is also observed I've been reading a lot in the biography/memoir genre lately. I've written here before of my love for Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. I shortly after followed that up with her novel Committed which, to be truthful, I didn't find as alluring. Since this conversation, I have also added the semi-autobiographical novel Marrying Buddha by Wei Hui to this list.


From these books, I have observed things that I thought worked, didn't work. It has also occurred to me that a good memoir seems to be as much about what you decide to put in as it is about what you don't decide to put in. The format of a narrative is necessarily neat. But real life doesn't happen as a neat narrative, obviously. There are threads that occur in a chronological time line that may have little or nothing to do with the greater story you're setting out to tell. Some bits you'll emphasise, some bits you'll belittle, and some you'll leave out altogether.

I don't know what to do with this statement, I just want to have it here.

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I've been guesting blogging between posts here as well. Follow me here at my fellow Leap of Faith author blog, Gemma K. Murray:
http://gemmakmurray.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/introducing-you-to-nicole-fergusson.html