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.

Not so long ago I wrote books with protags that I kept getting the feedback on that they were not relatable. I cried. Because those characters were like me. In lieu of finding protagonists that were like me in SFF, I wrote them Only to be told that they were not making sense, nobody would be/think/act like that.

And that hurt immensely because while those characters are not me, the things pointed out often were things that made them more like me. Especially the way they experience and process the world and emotions. (Not that I haven’t been told that I’m doing that wrong before.)

I have learnt a lot about me and about publishing since then. Do I write character that are more relatable now?

But no I do not cry about it the way I did before any longer. I have learnt that the things that make my protagonists stand out (like a sore thumb), the things that make them like me, are traits of my autism ADHD.

And agents have been no more trained to interact and relate to autistic characters than normal people. Of course they have difficulties relating. What am I expecting?

Truth be told? I don’t even know any longer.

Of course I could just reign it in and make my protags palatable. I thought about that, naturally, since I want to get pubbed really bad. Right now, I’m like, fuck it! With each book, my protagonists get more autistic. Maybe being blatantly obvious about it will work better.

But I want to be unapologetic about who I am. And I don’t want to have to justify and explain why I am the way I am. If you need an explanation to accept that I like eating the same thing over and over and love to bury myself under 13kg of blankie at night – fuck you.

People are weird. People are different in all directions. I don’t need to know why. (Unless they ask for help being less weird. Which generally, we don’t.) You can’t tell me people can’t relate to my character because they are like me, when I related to characters that were not like me my whole life.

I am also certain that there are people out there just waiting for more autistic protags in SFF. We want to see ourselves in the main character. And as it takes one to know one? We know. Better believe we know. We see it, when it’s there. And we want it. Want more of it. (Please rec me SFF with autistic protags. 🥺)

To circle back to writing unrelatable characters. I thought it was a me-problem, that I was incapable to write characters that readers can identify with. I have made it into a you-problem. I am writing characters you were not confronted with before. I am refusing to spoon-feed you the autistic experience. I am offering it to you in the form I experience the world (and it’s reactions to me).

I understand that tradpub doesn’t like it because it is new and untested. I understand that my voice is not seen as marketable. While some readers will easily identify with my characters, the majority is not used to them and will have to put some work into relating to them. Don’t worry. It gets easier over time. I’ve been doing it for over 40 years now and barely notice any longer.

This will not improve with more books. I am veering away from traditional, tightly-wound, fast-paced, three-act structure stories. I write what I want to read. And I know by the time tradpub deigns to publish some of that, I will be long dead.

Being relatable is a non-measure for a character. It is usually cut down to how much of a background you share with the person portrayed. And how much work you are willing to put into understanding them. I get now that for many people this amount is none. I feel I should be less surprised because it’s exactly what happens most times in life.

It was probably naive to think that things will be different in publishing just because it is allegedly a creative business looking for the fantastic. It’s still a business and what it looks for first and foremost is selling books.

My characters aren’t unrelatable. They are unprofitable.

My last blog entry really got me thinking. A lot of things came together, and I am still sorting through the wild knots. But what is becoming clear that I cannot just write my experiences and expect to be understood.

If I tell my story in the traditional way by showing, the neurotypical reader doesn’t see me. Accordingly, how can a neurotypical agent or editor? If I just tell my story without explanations, the NTs won’t get it. This is where the dreaded “cannot relate” comes into play.

This experience of having to explain myself in order to be understood correctly, also informs my reading habits. (And how I consume media in general.) If you show me a thing without explanation, I assume my initial reading will be off. And I have to manually calibrate to an NT reading. For me, the creator chose a way of displaying things that leaves unquestionable openings to change the reading later on.

I can never believe you are telling me the truth about a character or a situation if you only show it to me. Hence, every piece of media is chock full of subtext and possibilities. What is going on behind the layers of masking I am shown? How do the actions relate in a system of reference that is not neurotypical?

To apply that to Heater Girl – if the book only shows the events (girl under heater, doesn’t come out until left alone), NTs will assume a need for attention. NDs may also assume a need for attention because we are very good at learning what the “correct” reading of a situation is from NTs. (If we don’t, we die.)

Without the explanation form inside the girl under the heater, this reading will stand. Other actors my bring up the ND reading as an option, but our NT habits are either hard to break, or dangerous to break. Usually, we just don’t.

This is why I have to tell readers what is going on. For those who don’t know and for those who don’t believe it. Only by saying “this is what is happening here” can I be sure the events aren’t misread in a NT way. This is how I make sure you get to see what happens behind the layers of masking. And to do that, I have to break the accepted form of writing which says: “show, don’t tell” what’s going on.

Right now, it feels like a vicious cycle. I can write to expectation and won’t be seen. My being and existence is overwritten by NT readings and interpretations. Or I can write against expectation and not ben seen either because the manuscript goes nowhere. Because it is not written correctly. Because my characters are not relatable, make no sense.

I have no solution or even conclusion. This is how things are right now. I am invisible even in my own words.

My mum kept telling a story about me in kindergarten. You see, I was a quiet child and usually unproblematic to handle, invisible. But in kindergarten, oh in kindergarten I was an attention whore.

As soon as I was dropped off, I’d crawl under the heater and wouldn’t come out. No amount of coaxing or bribing would work. I would stay put. Only when left alone I would finally get bored and leave my hiding place in search for more attention.

I believed that story.

And why not. I don’t remember this. I remember nothing from kindergarten. And what sane person would crawl under a heater anyway? What reason could there be, if not having the kindergarten teachers give you their undivided attention in the attempt to lure you out?

Today I look at the poor little critter trying to find some peace and quite under a heater, trying to process too many things going on at once. She’s overwhelmed and nothing will change that – except leaving her alone. Once little!Mel has calmed down, she can face the world again.

Who gets to tell my story?

For the longest time, my mum did. And I echoed the story, trying to find the charm in it. Because it had to be charming, didn’t it?, to bear repeating? I understand the desire to have one-on-one interactions. Crowds are noisy and complicated. And while I crave attention, I also want to be safe when receiving it.

Today I have accepted that there is only so much interaction I can stomach. (Masking is exhausting.) I worked on a fair for six hours this Saturday and slept off the exhaustion for most of the remaining weekend. People are too much. Even when I love them and love being around them, they are A Lot. I need a break.

I didn’t intend this to be be about writing. But I’m a writer; it’s what I do. And these days I am writing my own story. The story where I am lying under the heater overwhelmed. My characters are allowed to be like me. They act like me, think like me, perceive like me. They most definitely express themselves like me.

I didn’t always put it into my stories on purpose. But I think all my protagonists have it because I wrote them to be normal like me. (gigglesnort) When I write today, I know my protagonist will be neurodivergent. (On top of being an enby, bitches love enbies! It’s me I’m bitches). And I lean into it. On the page, I can be perceived safely – ticks, tells, and stims.

I hear that this is wanted, that my voice is important and needs to be heard. People like me want to see themselves, people not like me need to see us to understand us. And yet, I so often get the feeling that it’s not not what publishing wants at all. They want the little attention whore, the motives they understand.

As soon as I stop explaining myself, I am automatically read like the attention seeking version of my story. If I show you who I am, you see something else. (This ties in closely with my problems of Show Don’t Tell As described in Lies, lies everywhere and my I Don’t Believe You blog posts.)

I cannot exist as myself and not be misread. I cannot write myself and not be misread. As soon as I stop explaining myself, I am no longer playing the game correctly. A little girl huddling up under the heater is not an active protagonist. She has no agency. Unlike her little twin that is making others do her bidding, who has an effect on the outside world instead of the other way round.

The world has an effect on me more often than I can affect it. Being left alone when overwhelmed is a comfort-fantasy. Being helped through the pain is a power-fantasy and one I am only now learning to write. Stars know if I ever get to a place where I can live it.

Does this bode well for my books?

What can I say…

…my mum tells this little story about me – about her little attention whore that was otherwise so perfectly invisible.

I’m not sure this has anything to do with my being a frothing mass of angry nd. Maybe it does. I cannot say because I have no framework of reference. Guess I am not (yet) moving in all the right circles for me.

Of course, this was once more sparked by Craft in the Real World my Mathew Salesses. There is a part where he speaks about Chinese traditions in storytelling. That has nothing to do with my own storytelling. Some things stood out for me simply because I want them in my stories. The ones I write as much as the ones I read.

Explicit emotions, wanting to make the reader feel something. Purposeful lack of interiority. Romantic irony. Directly addressing the audience or at all times an awareness of the audience and the structure surrounding story telling with all its participants.

I have never put names on these things except for myself and always as ways I deviate from correct writing. It is on me that I don’t understand why a protag’s head can’t just be empty, its last brain cell being squizzly squiggly fucking bendy and gallivanting around on a perpetual 404-error.

That the protag shouldn’t be addressing the audience (in)directly. Like, am I the only one who does this? Talk to my imagined audience in my head, performing on a stage of my own making as if I’m in a live feed?

That direct and unabashed emotions are the food for the soul my heart hungers for. Why would a metaphor transport the point better? Emotions are raw and leave you vulnerable. Why should I put up walls around that again when I just chipped them away carefully?

These are things I like. (along with free-floating dialogue, no descriptions, and info dumps). But they are branded as Bad Writing. When truly, they may all just be part of a different tradition. Maybe I just don’t know because all I get is western style stuff.

I grew up not questioning it. Writing craft advice was The Gospel. It was me that didn’t get it. Somehow I managed to not get the basics of writing, my fave pastime of all time. But try as I might, I could not like what that advice produced in my hands. It was obvious, that I was the problem.

Tell you what? I will be a fucking problem.

I was taught there is a right way to write, and now I begin to understand it is just one tradition. A dominant tradition people are loth to let go. Hell if I know why. Maybe it is easier to judge stories following a pattern. If it strays, it is a bad story. Easy.

If you have different right ways to tell a story, this becomes increasingly difficult. Not only are you expected to understand the different ways (but do you have to? Can’t you just enjoy?) The possibility to be “wrong” increases. You are prone to make mistakes.

I can see where this is making a lot of people very uncomfortable. Can’t say I care, though. I have been made very uncomfortable approaching the subject from the other side for a long time. How about we meet in the middle?

Or better yet, yeet those preconceptions into the sun where they belong. Embrace the multitude of traditions and writing styles. Celebrate them merging into a kaleidoscopic flux of self-renewing creativity.

Not everything that can come from this will be gold. But let’s be honest. How much is getting published these days that isn’t gold either?

The one thing I know now is that traditional western story telling can never meet all my narrative needs. It was not made to. It does not have to.

But for bogssake, give me other options!

Writing and publishing will be all rolled into one for this one and I am not taking criticism. 😙 I will freely admit that writing is doing a much better job of being diverse than tradpub which is part of the problem because producing all those amazing things means nothing if tradpub ignores them wholesale. 🤷‍♂️

Writing and books are advertised as being a choice, wide range, a free-for all. Anything goes! You just have to do it well. (And with enough practice that is a given, right?!?) (Who decides what well even is?!? 🤨)

Well, here I go. I have written a thing and also, I like reading a thing or maybe even two thing if spoons. I am very picky where my reading is concerned. This may tie into the overall issue depicted here. (I say “may” but really, I am certain it does.)

But that’s fine. I finally found my people – writers, some of them even published. And I finally get access to The Writing. And it’s like, let’s go to the fruit market!

Yay! 🥳

We go. We arrive. And every stall I see sells apples. Like, different kinds, sour, sweet, crunchy, gnarly. There’s absolutely every kind of apple you can imagine. Some are suspiciously close to pears and one looks like it’d rather be a peach.

So I wonder, where are the other fruits? Mangoes anyone? Blueberries, please? And I get those looks of incomprehension.

– Like, we’re at a fruit market.

– Yes, yes, we are, so where are the fruits?

– Look around. It’s all fruit.

– Yes, but it is all the same kind of fruit.

– It is all fruit!

And then there is this horrible dawning of maybe the “all” doesn’t mean everything in this place is fruit, but these are all the different fruits there are. This is it. You want fruit? You better like apple.

And so I stand there, clutching my raspberries to my heart until they squish because I will never have apples.

Also, I would like some non-apples to read please.