This morning, I found this post on my dash and it home. So maybe now it is my time to write one of them “it gets better” posts.

Some years ago, I had a tag that said ‘Mel needs therapy’ because it was true and I wanted to start one. I made some small attempts – all I could do in my state. It was not enough. The system is set up badly and at the point in my life where I really needed therapy bad, I didn’t have the energy to get through the process.

Much later, I tried again. About 1,5 years ago. I got one assessment appointment and then nothing. I could have called a hotline (ha!) to get appointments with an emergency therapist. You see the problem with that, yes? It is impossible to do this step in writing. Impossible.

So I let it lie for half a year and then decided, no. Enough! It won’t be fast, but I can pay for a little out of my own pocket. Again, I contacted therapists. Of five, I got three replies. Of those 3 replies I got two first assessments. One of them put me on the wait list. I am allegedly on first place of it since December 2023.

The last therapist is the one I see now. She’s great and I trust her with my mental health. I couldn’t afford many sessions because each was 100 bucks out of pocket and my pockets are not that deep. I managed 2 session a month at best. But I paid for them, and I did some work and my therapist helped me with all the steps to get insurance to pay for therapy.

I couldn’t have done it without her. Where does one even start? But she is familiar with that. She’s also familiar with trans and non-binary people. The relief, not having to explain my existence was immense. Autism and ADHD are not things she works with a lot, but she’s more helpful and supportive than anybody else I met during my journey.

And then, this morning, that post. It hit me that, yes, I got better. But no, I have not treated poor adolescent me the way she deserves. All her hopes and dreams – already cracking. She doesn’t know how different she is and why. Only that people treat her different. She’s not one of them. (One of her teachers actually tells her mother little Mel isn’t part of the class community.)

But little Mel is quiet and does okay in school and nobody notices her turning more inwards and switching to English inside her head to have a safe place and language for herself.

I want to tell her that it gets better. It really does. Yes, there’s hell and high water between her and their better future. And no, it won’t be ‘worth it’ and ‘make her stronger’. That’s something she has to tackle alone. But they will. And they will be successful.

And her dreams – little love, you’re doing so well. You have written so many stories that moved people in all the way you intended! You still do. There are two books ready for publishing, and the whole of tradpub can’t stop you. The differences finally have names. And communities.

I am not alone.

Friendships are still difficult. Maybe I can get the hang of them now, that I know better how I work and what works for me. I’m grappling with getting the upper hand on my autism because if I don’t find strategies to work with it in my life, it will express itself however it wants.

My therapist keeps urging me to get a new psychiatrist who actually takes my ADHD seriously. (I’m on the second mood enhancer. At least this one has an effect which is to completely separate me from hunger signs.) But overall it gets better.

And one of theses days I will learn how to take adolescent Mel’s hand and prove to her that she’s fine. She’ll do things her way. And it will work out. She will become many of the things she wants to. And as for the rest? There is still time.

Lighten up, little one. Life is worth living yet.

No, not that way. 😂

Writing is a very mental thing to do. Erm. Yes. It uses a lot of brainpower and most of us write on computers, laptops, our phones. There is very little physical to the work. And that isn’t all bad. Never had a hobby take up that little physical space in my life. Love it.

But sometimes, that is detrimental. Being able to touch and interact with something gives it a different level of being real. And as much as I love putting a whole-ass novel into my brain as a special interest, sometimes I need more.

Many of us, I included, print out the ms when we finished for editing. Or just to be proud of the book we wrote, because, yay! Writing a book is hard and finishing a book is a great feat. 🥳

And it helps. But sometimes I need to touch my story before it is done. So far, I have found two ways to interact with my manuscript. The chalk board and the magnet wall.

The chalkboard is just foil I glued to a wall so I can write on the space with chalk. It is great because I can just erase things. I can draw with coloured chalks, and everything is easily removable. I used it A Lot for Horny WIP.

I split the plot into the plot!plot and the sex!plot. Putting the two columns next to each other showed me where there was an imbalance (always *le sigh*) and work to improve that.

I checked of bits I had written. I add more scenes as I they came to me. For act 2 I ran out of space for plot scenes but by then I had mastered the hammock and was fine.

I also used the chalkboard for editing another manuscript. Drew a nice little image on there with the pillars of the story and the things that needed editing in overall.

And whenever I got stumped or needed a break? I could just look at the picture and go: oh, soup. Yes, need more soup! As a very optical person, the colour-coding with the chalks helped me a lot, too. I finished the edits. The ms is out with betas. I may go back to this when I do the next round of edits after finishing The Losing Game.

Ah, The Losing Game. Right now, it really feels like one. I have finished the hammock. It is incoherent and has no tension At All. I know this. But the words are there which is a good first step. Enter the magnetic wall.

Before I used it to put visualise the relationships of the characters, who is close to who and about when. I think I have internalised that by now. So what I did is put all the scenes I have on little index cars. And then I wrote down all the scenes that needed happening on index cards. And then I put them all up on the wall. (And then I despaired for a bit because so many scenes.)

Then I started pushing the scenes around on the wall. This doesn’t work with the chalk boards. It is too much erasing and writing. But on the wall, I just pick off the card and put it somewhere else. I added my coloured names to scenes to see if there is an imbalance (an hoo boy, there was).

I’m not finished rearranging yet, but it already looks a lot more even and balanced than before. I may need different names to colour-code with though.

It also helps that I finally found the end of act 2. A lot of handwavarium I wanted to do but didn’t know how will now vanish in the time skip. 😇

It helps that I’m writing in Scrivener that allows me to rearrange the scenes as easily as my magnetic wall. Next step will be smoothing of the new transitions, writing of the missing scenes and on to the last act. (I’m so sorry Ylli. 😅)

Other things I did.

For a non-liner short story, I cut up the story and shuffled the pieces around on the floor. I marked the words I wanted to be hyperlinks to other bits and made sure every piece had at least two signs for coming in and two for going out.

So, find a way to bring your words into the physical world to play around with them. I find it helps me a lot.

I showed a friend my outline for the talk on autistic protags in fantasy I wanna do in October and she liked the angle of how the protag being autistic informs/should inform their reading. And then she asked, if I didn’t wanna do a bit on autistic writing style. How the autism informs the writing.

I am excited and devastated.

Because, yes, yes! It exists. I have seen it. I was privileged to read it. I totally want to talk bout that.

But I don’t know if I should because it never survives into published books. Autistic traits in writing are generally considered bad writing. And in the books I will talk about, those traits were not noticeable to me. (I shall definitely do a re-read with an eye out for that.)

I’m not saying the traits are all good or even useful. I am saying they exist and are informed by how we process and experience things differently. How we look at the world differently and translate those differences into the way we write.

So, what is it that I noticed?

1) Descriptions

We often don’t describe things. We focus on what is important and display that. In conversations, we have “talking head syndrome”, our characters walk and act in white rooms. I totally get that because when I focus on a thing, everything else might as well not exist.

This can be difficult to follow. I understand this when I read other people’s work. The author knows exactly how the surroundings look and filters out that noise. Thank you. Unfortunately, as a reader, I do not know what is around, so a leg up is appreciated.

I don’t think this is a characteristic that will ever make it into published work wholesale because while common, it is confusing. What I do think, though, is that we can get by on a lot less description than is currently expected. And a floating head or two hasn’t killed anybody yet.

I’d love to get to a point where “just enough description to keep you tethered” is a valid writing style.

2) One Word to Say it All

Tied to the above, when we try to describe stuff so our readers don’t get lost, we repeat words. A lot. Because we like to be precise and concise. I have a scene where a mage draws magic lights onto walls in swirling patterns. I use the word pattern about every other line. Because that is what it is.

We’re all trained to catch word echoes. This is not a helpful trait for keeping the vibe of the description. If I add another descriptor, that one has to be pertinent and significantly add to what the thing is. And the thing may not even be important

Which leads to another reason we repeat words, often generic umbrella terms: the thing we describe isn’t really important. We’re in a city. There are many houses. So. Many. Houses. It doesn’t really matter what the houses look like (see point 1). So we say “house” and move on.

I don’t see why this should be a problem when the things described are unimportant according to point 1. If anything about the house was important, we’d tell you.

3) Focus Words

I know you prefer to call them something else, but I have found them in the writing of autistic people and since you assume they are there because of untrained writing, I may as well assume they are there because they have a function. For us at least.

Ever heard how things can get overwhelming for autistic people? That there can easily be too much especially when there’s people involved? I find it very hard to focus when there is a lot going on. I know I may chose the wrong thing to concentrate on.

Enter the focus word. It will let me know exactly where to put my effort. Expressions containing “hear, feel, see, notice” point me in the direction of the important thing going on. (For me they also work like a close-up.) The party may be loud and overcrowded, but when I “feel a hand descend on my shoulder” I know this is where the focus should be.

Something I have no insight on outside myself, is tied into point 1 again. If I don’t consciously focus on a thing, it’s not there. So saying something is a thing I hear/see/feel makes it real and turns it into something that exists and that I consciously notice.

Motivation and Agency 😤

We don’t really need it. “Because it was the right thing to do” goes miles and miles. “Because it seemed like a good idea” has a lot of legs to stand on. As does the belief that this is something is the Done Thing. We may not understand why because it comes from neurotypical rules. Accordingly application may be more or less successful.

Many of us have learnt how be reactive. Our instincts of what to do were proven wrong (for NTs) too often and there were repercussions. We react. We let the other side start the script because that gives us a leg up on successfully getting through the interaction without crashing it.

Agency is a big deal in publishing. But it is also a privilege and that needs to be considered.

I’m sure there’s more if you look closely. But these were the ones that immediately came to my mind. And I’m not saying this needs to be in our books 1:1. But we should be allowed to write less descriptions, more constructions that reflect our experiences, and protagonists whose agency is closer to our won.

Angy nd out.