Balancing Mind Ogre Patterns

On Wednesdays, I get toothpaste in my eye. I’m not sure why this occurs every week without fail. It’s not intentional. Wednesdays are not good days for me in general.

There’s a pattern.

Sundays, I forget to do everything and wind up frantic at 10:00 at night, wondering how I’m going to do it all with no time.

Mondays are like New Years Day. I’m bright and shiny with intention and purpose. It will be a phenomenal day. I will exercise, plow through my pending work, clean the house, volunteer for a charity, and find a cure for the common cold. I wait until about 3:00 to admit none of that happened, but the dream has not yet died.

Tuesdays, I take another stab at it, but it’s like January 2nd. You can’t recapture the magic of that electric determination. By lunchtime, I stop even pretending to be a productive member of society.

Wednesdays are toothpaste. There’s often an afternoon nap involved, too.

Thursdays, I don’t give a damn about anything. I do what needs doing, but it takes effort. If someone asks me to participate in some event or activity on Thursday, it ain’t happening.

Fridays, it’s a toss-up whether I’m even going to get dressed.

On Saturdays, my resolutions come back, only this time I swear to go out and enjoy the world, see art, watch a play, and enjoy life. It’s a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the birds are singing… I’ll just finish this chapter in my book, and then I’ll get going. Yep.

Then I keep reading straight through to Sunday evening.

The pattern of my life is one I would love to change. My therapist would love for me to change it, too. If nothing else, I would get more work done, which would enable me to afford my therapy sessions. It’s a vicious circle.

Every night, I lie in bed and imagine worlds and adventures and people, forming them into stories in my head. Everyone tells me to write them down. I don’t.

When you talk to people about depression, this is not what they would imagine, I think. How it wears you down, dragging at you in whispers that hold you back with subtle force. I’m not sad. Like I said, it’s a beautiful day, the sun, the birds, etc. My mind is just not under my complete control. And yes, it’s frustrating as hell.

There are rare days when I am hypo-manic and can take on the world. Those are the days when work gets done, stuff gets cleaned, and I am the mistress of all I survey. Brimming with focus, burning to explore the world. It doesn’t last, though. I pay the price afterward with an unusual low. This is kind of like a kid on a sugar high passing out when they come back down.

So low is bad, high is bad, and I have to learn to ride the line between the two. My pattern allows this, but I need to change my pattern. How to stay balanced while doing this is a conundrum.

My friends and family want wonderful things for me. That’s great. I want wonderful things, too. And I understand it’s hard to watch from the outside while I continue with the same old behaviors and making the same old mistakes. It’s impressive these people stick around, really. I’m annoying.

There are these voices in my head. (No, not like that. I’m not schizophrenic.)The encouragement, faith, love, and admiration I receive from the people in my life is a quiet chorus, whispering at me over and over to remind me that there is something more, and that I can have it. These soothing voices join together against the loud clamor of my own inner voice telling me I suck in every possible way. It’s hard to hear past that barrage of negativity.

I hear everyone, though. I do. No one should ever think that their words have no effect on me. Often those words are the only weapons I have in the fight to do SOMETHING today, even if it’s brushing my teeth. Without those voices in my mind, it would be a fight I couldn’t win.

Mental illness is invisible. Sure, you can see someone flake out and do some weird shit. You can see cuts, scars, weight gained or lost, mood swings, seizures and meltdowns. It’s below the surface that the true symptoms do their damage, however. Each depressive person’s experience is unique to them, but there are many near-constant similarities. The biggest is that depression has the potential to tear apart everything they care about and want to build for themselves. It’s impossible to do your taxes, wash the dishes, or manage your workload when you’re fighting a sumo wrestler in your head. Your hands are already full.

I’m not sure where this is going, but here it is anyway.

In my case, depression is a fact of life. I’ve never been without it, even as a toddler. There is no “me” without depression. I’d be a completely different person. That means that there is no clear way to unravel its effects from the rest of who I am. It feeds my creativity, informs my decisions, and influences my relationships. So I have no frame of reference for what “normal” would mean for me. I don’t think I’d like it.

My imagination walks hand in hand with my illness, giving me words and images and characters to bring to life in my writing. The books I read come alive, dynamic and immersed in detail. That would be hard to give up.

Having been judged and marginalized all my life, I am much more accepting and accommodating in my interactions with others. I embrace the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. (Metaphorically. I’m not a hugger.)

It makes me want to help others, support those who are suffering, particularly when their circumstances are more heartbreaking or perilous than mine. I want to fix all the problems in the world, even though I can’t fix mine.

Depression gives me those gifts, but it keeps me from using them. And that’s a dilemma that makes me run around in mental circles day and night. I want to use the talents and strengths. I want to achieve my potential. I want to tap into the creative spring inside me. If only I manage to be strong enough to fight the ogre who lives in my thoughts and tears apart my confidence.

My ability to feel any self-worth is significantly impaired. I can’t accept that it’s not my fault, because I’d get past it if I didn’t suck. I can’t defend myself against criticism, because it’s true that I suck. It’s hard to believe that anyone really loves me because I suck. There’s no point in working to become healthier, since I’d suck regardless. Every time I meet someone new, they can tell right away that I suck. No one will ever read my books because they suck. I will never, ever be good enough, because I’m not good at all.

This is the ogre that lives in my head. This is the voice that I hear ALL the time. It’s constant. It’s there right now, telling me to stop typing and just go back to bed with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and a spoon to mourn the loss of my dignity.

I may not be dignified, but I did write this. The quiet voices of hope helped me write this, and so even this small step is an accomplishment.

Suck it, mind ogre.

The Minor Character

In many ways, the minor character is sometimes easily forgotten. The gregarious taxi driver, the helpful woman at the store, the nosy coworker, and the grumpy neighbor all have their parts to play, but the reader tends to not give much thought to these brief appearances. So why incorporate them at all?

I think it’s not hard to understand that the reader’s experience of a novel and the author’s experience while writing it differ quite a bit. One thing that the average reader may not realize is that no character appears in a story without a distinct purpose. Any novelist worth his or her salt will pay exacting attention to every facet of the novel, including the minor characters. There must be a reason for a particular character to appear in the narrative, and the presentation of that character must maintain a balance that is consistent with his or her importance to the action and development of the story.

In The Truth Seekers, Mrs. Olivia MacDonald serves as the necessary chaperone for her young friend, and so must be blended into the scenes in which she appears. She herself is not a major player, and her voice must not be allowed to overshadow those of the main characters. However, at certain points her actions move the narrative forward, so we need to see enough of her to have a sense of who she is as a person. By way of contrast, the existence of the male lead’s friend John needs to be established, but we don’t need to interact with him a great deal.

In Wishing Cotton, Olive meets Mr. J.P. Croupington (“Pinger” to his friends). This character’s importance begins and ends with the scene in which he appears. So why have him at all? He helps to provide comic relief, but his conversation with Olive also works to create the mood needed for Olive’s subsequent conversation with her friend Blair. So old Pinger provides a necessary element to the narrative, but once his usefulness is at an end, he vanishes from our view.

In the case of quiet John mentioned above, a good deal of his lines were cut in order to achieve the proper balance. Every time a character is introduced into the story, their voice, opinions, and personality are also inserted. The people they are influences the main characters on some level, but their appearance must blend into the story. In other words, it is one thing to have the gregarious taxi driver chat with the main character and give a suggestion that impacts that character’s choice of destination. It is another thing altogether to allow the driver to take center stage. We don't need to see the color of his eyes or have his life story laid out for us. A character that has such a limited part to play cannot be allowed overshadow the main characters.

All the same, minor characters are important, and often the author is able to provide gorgeous characterizations that give the reader a firm grasp on the minor character before he or she walks offstage. When the right balance is present, the minor character can be one of the most vital elements in a novel.

More of a Project Pony than a Plot Bunny

So I have gotten nothing accomplished recently. This is very frustrating for me, since I had planned to have taken over at least a portion of the world by now.

Since my world domination plans need to be readjusted, I thought I’d take a few minutes to write another blog post.

The reason I am so behind schedule is simple. If David Tennant had had the decency to be a lousy Doctor Who, then I wouldn’t have gotten sucked in to watching the last six seasons on Netflix. My children then got sucked in themselves because they’re nosy little things who always have to know what I’m watching; in the interest of family togetherness, I was practically forced to watch all six seasons all over again with them at their insistence. Then we started watching the classic series from my childhood. My youngest son has named Tom Baker the “Disco Doctor,” and my teenager is completely appalled at what passed for special effects back in the day.

We all loved Christopher Eccleston, of course, but it was David Tennant who really captured my boys’ hearts. Of course, he compounded this sin by being charming in interviews, witty on British television programs, and having the audacity to continue acting in other roles in a generally talented and engaging manner. So, David, if you’re out there – my schedule is shot to hell, and it is entirely your fault. Hang your head in shame.

One of the programs Mr. Tennant did as part of his evil campaign to turn my calendar into an absolute mess was called “Who Do You Think You Are?” His bit was “So You Think I’m Scottish?” This program interested me for several reasons, the first being that I dearly love a good story, and generally you get a good story if you dig into your family background as he was doing. It was also an excellent way to teach my boys a bit about their own heritage and give them a sense that they are here today because of the countless choices and challenges in their ancestors’ lives.

What grabbed my interest in particular when watching this program was the idea that what we consider “history” really happened to people and that events like the Clearances in Scotland, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and countless other significant points in time that we study at school directly impacted who we were destined to become. For example, had my own ancestors not been religious dissenters, they would not have hopped on the Mayflower. Who would I have been then? Well, that's easy - I would never have existed, since the intermarriage between other nationalities that has gone on in my family tree since we set foot on Plymouth Rock would never have happened. In fact, I have so many different nationalities in my background that my children tend to refer to my side of the family as simply “European.” At any rate, when you look back at a specific person from your family tree and learn about who they were and what their life was like, it brings their humanity into sharp relief, and you begin to see them as a fully three-dimensional human being, which in turn gives you unexpected insight into the person you are.

So I was thinking about this in terms of my writing and the creation of fully-actualized characters. I do become impatient with books that give the protagonists one central idea that motivates and informs all of their decisions and actions throughout the story; to me, that seems to be over-simplifying how people work. If writers could “discover” their characters in much the same way we learn about our ancestors through research and legwork, I think that it would make for much more dramatic and believable characterizations. I know that all writers work differently, and so I can only speak for myself. Generally, I will get a plot idea and develop it in my head before creating characters to fill the various necessary roles within the story. But what would happen if I constructed the person before I constructed the plot? How would that impact the finished book?

One of my cousins has suggested that I should write the story of our family, particularly that of our grandparents. I have shied away from tackling this project in the past because I really could not figure out how to even begin, but now that rascally David Tennant has given me an idea. As my fellow novelists know, an idea is a very, very dangerous thing in an imaginative mind. I have some other pieces that are currently in progress and must be completed, but once those are taken care of, I am considering tackling a new project based on the idea of a story driven entirely by history rather than characters bending to the will of the plot. I think this might make for an interesting string of blog entries as well. Guess we’ll have to wait and see! If it results in anything worth publishing, I’ll have to dedicate it to Mr. Tennant.

That little troublemaker.