How do you overcome depression to write?

Since I'm one of those weird crowd-loving people and I love asking people what they want me to blog about next, I'll blog this time on the unsightly topic of pulling yourself out of depression to write. Asked by one of my fellow writers. I suppose I have enough credit to talk about this, as writing happened to pull me out of suicidal thoughts and healed me to the point of giving me enough courage to quit my career and start writing full time. I'm even writing my fourth book right now, and it's only been 18 months since I started writing full time. If I could do it, you can do it. Let me spill my history here on how the entire thing transpired and perhaps it'll help you too, if you find yourself in the middle of darkness.

Find a support buddy. This is one of the hardest truths about writing. Without someone to support you, it's really hard to start. You feel heavy like a mountain. The air is too hard to breathe. The bed is impossible to leave. Nothing has color. Happiness is a word that doesn't exist in your universe. It's simply inconceivable to force yourself to start writing. Why? What's the point? You don't care. Heck, this is not your worst problem. You don't care to get dressed or to eat, or you eat so much that you want to puke and don't care to get dressed because you feel too disgusted with yourself to do anything nice for yourself. When you're depressed, you can hardly motivate yourself to start moving toward the light. You need a gentle push by someone, and that someone is your support buddy. Since I was suicidal and in a very bad place, I had to go to therapy. I didn't care for it, but I did it, for my kids, so they would have a sane mom. My therapist suggested I start writing in a journal. My therapist, essentially, became my first support buddy. My boyfriend became my support buddy after that, and still is. The fact that he reads my writing every night keeps me writing. I mean, I would still write, if I were alone. I have conquered my fear enough to do it on my own, but it gives me a tremendous boost knowing that someone wants to read my shit. Also, my readers. Since I started writing, there are people who have come back for more books of mine, a few people even pre-ordered ROSEHEAD, a novel that's not going to be done for another month. I guess my point here is, do you have someone who would be willing to be your support buddy? Because if you don't, it will be awfully hard for you to overcome depression yourself. If you don't have a buddy, want me to be one for you? I will try to ping you as often as I can, or give you a boost, just let me know.

Stick to a very rigid schedule. I've blogged about this again and again and again, and I will mention it again. The way out of darkness is a ladder. You have to lift your leg, take a step, lift another, take another. Step by step, day by day, you will get out of darkness. But you need the ladder. Rigid schedule is your ladder. Here is how I pulled myself out. When I was in a really bad place, I have scheduled my calendar with simple things like "Wake up" and "Brush your teeth" and "Have breakfast". At night it would be "Read a book" and "Go to the bathroom to take a shower" and "Bedtime". I'm serious. You can ask my ex-husband who has helped me tremendously throughout that time. I was so disoriented about life in general, that I had to give myself some sort of an anchor, a firm ladder that I could climb. I have scheduled my writing time and my reading time into the calendar too. I no longer use it. It's been almost 5 years, and I don't need it anymore. But back then I did. I would suspect you need the same, some kind of a system that will force you to do things despite the fact that you feel numb and indifferent. I still battle anxiety and mild bouts of depression almost every day. When I look at my writing and think, this is such shit, why do I even bother? I don't think it's worth anyone's reading time and want to bury my head in pillows and never come out. My schedule pulls me out. I know in my head the things that I need to do. They became habit. That's what you want, your writing to become your habit.

Pick someone for whom you write. If you're trying to write for everyone, you might slide even deeper into depression, because it's impossible. But when you have a specific person in mind, writing becomes telling a story to that person. Maybe there is someone you loved but were never able to say so? Or someone you hate and were never able to express that? Or something else? Whatever it is, I'm sure you have a person in mind whom you would want to tell a story. Imagine that person when you sit down to write. Better, stick that person's photograph on your wall. If it's hard to start writing, start talking to that person and record yourself. Then play back what you said and type it up. It doesn't matter how horrible it looks typed up as opposed to spoken. What you will find, once you start typing it, it will start to flow. All you need is a gentle push to start, that's all. The rest will happen on its own. If you get stuck, stop writing and start talking to that person again. I wrote SIREN SUICIDES like this one huge letter to my father. He sexually and physically abused me, although in his eyes it was normal disciplining, to help me grow up into a decent person, hopefully someone better than my mother. He deemed her a whore, hence he wanted to make me hate sex, at which he almost succeeded. I hated it for most of my life, rediscovering it only after I fully recovered about 3 years ago. In this sense, my trilogy is a letter to him about how I felt, although all sexual abuse context has been removed from it, and it's not my story anymore, it's Ailen's story. I'm using it here as an example, to maybe inspire you to spill your pain too, in a shape of a big big big letter to someone.

Shield yourself from negative people. This is one of the hardest things that I had to do, and I still suffer from not being able to say NO when I need to. When you're depressed, you're in a very vulnerable state. One negative word can make you give up on your writing. I know we all usually laugh at this, saying things like, grow a thick skin or pull yourself together or don't listen to them. But it's hard to do when you're wounded, you don't have enough defenses to protect yourself from negativity, it goes straight to your heart. Stop seeing people who don't believe in you. Don't go places if you have a chance to run into these people. If you have to, become a complete hermit. If somebody doesn't like it, tell those people to fuck off. This is your life, and you're getting close to dying every minute. How you spend it is your business and nobody else's. If someone tells you that you shouldn't write because you suck, don't waste your time to answer. Your dream is to write, so write, and don't let the naysayers sway you. It will take you time to grow a thick skin, and you need a place and time to grow it. Until then, protect yourself! If it means disappearing behind a thick door, do it. If it means reading all day to get yourself in the mood to write for only one hour, do it. Send everyone else to hell.

To close this, I will tell you about my daily battle with my bouts of anxiety or mild depression or whatever you want to call it. I constantly battle this idea that my writing sucks. I'm afraid that I'm getting worse and not better. I get less new followers on Twitter these days and I think I got boring, which is total bullshit and I shouldn't complain, with the amount of followers I have, but it kind of stopped growing last month and is hovering at about 67,230. As of today I'm drastically changing my tweeting habits, because it takes me up to 3 hours of tweeting every day. I think I'm overwhelming people. Also, I can write a whole chapter in 3 hours. So there you have it. I freak out because I think my wit has dried up. Also, I'm not getting as many book sales because the hype about SIREN SUICIDES has died, and I'm not fueling it, although I should. And there is no hype about ROSEHEAD yet as I'm still writing it. I'm still learning how to generate hype. I will try to train myself to spend less time on social media and more time writing, and that makes me scared shitless because I'm afraid I will alienate my followers, of whom many are my readers. Some days I wake up and think, I should give up. There is no point. I suck so much, I'm the worst writer ever. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU GET OUT OF A FUNK LIKE THAT? I'll tell you. The only thing that keeps me going are my faithful readers who are waiting for my next book, and the fact that when I'm writing, when I'm in the zone, nothing else matters. Reality with all of its scary shit is gone, and I soar, I fly, I feel so happy and giddy, as if I turned 5 again and have no care in the world. There. This is as naked as I can get for you, to show you my struggle, to hopefully let you know that you're not alone. Hold on to me. I will keep writing, no matter what, and I will pull you with me, pull you out of your darkness. 

I LOVE YOU.

Writer's confidence, or where the fuck do you find that beast?

Well, let's see here. The last couple of days were interesting as I happened to have invited the very first online troll (sorry Herbert, but you are a troll, aren't you?) to my blog, specifically, to the post HOW TO WRITE A BAD BOOK, whose glorious comments you may read at your leisure. As a side note, traffic to my site doubled since the troll's comment, so thank you dear troll, err, pardon, Herbert, I love you. How does this relate to write's confidence? Oh, big time. Because I'm a writer and I hardly have any confidence, having been beaten up in my childhood and told I suck and abused and some other not so pretty shit, so although I survived and fled my home country of Russia to US, and even started writing in English, which is not my first language (my therapist said it opened some other part of my brain or something), anyway... getting lost here... what I wanted to say was, I'm so unsure of myself that I end up hurting myself, and upsetting my readers. I tell them my books suck, and they yell at me that they don't, that they love them, and I want to hide. It's a horrible horrible thing. I'm getting a little better, but still have a long way to go. So I was very worried to have upset this man-troll (or troll-man? My apologies, Herbert) with my post, because, those of you who know me, know that I'm pathologically incapable of being serious. I'm serious only when I'm in pain, and I'm not much in pain anymore. I'm happy, so most of the time I'm being sarcastic, which annoys people a lot, as I happen to deliver it with a straight face. Such was the case with this, and I realize I need to learn very quickly to believe in myself, in my writing, in my ability to stay true to myself no matter what anyone tells me. I'm a writer, my books will be read, wait, THEY ARE BEING ALREADY READ! I need to get used to opinions. How to do it? Let me try to break it down into steps. 

Get rid of the fear, fear makes you into someone else. To truly believe in yourself you have to be yourself. But if you're afraid to be yourself, you try to be someone else. You see some shiny author doing some shiny thing, and you're like, hey, I'll do this too! You try it, it doesn't quite work, you see another shiny thing, and so the cycle continues. Each time you try something new, it doesn't work. You try to understand why, and the only thing that makes sense is to try something new again. So you do. You chase yet another shiny thing. Eventually you find yourself depressed and want to give up. I know because I've been there myself. I tried copying other writer's styles, and then concluded that I suck so bad, I need to quit. How did I climb out of it? This is one of those impossible tasks that I struggle with every day and have been able to conquer only for hours at a time by sheer will, sheer amount of writing and with my boyfriend's encouragement, who every day is beating into my head that I don't suck, that I'm good, that I'm very good. I even wrote a post on HOW TO BECOME A WRITER: LET SOMEONE LOVE YOU. Anyway, to be able to be yourself you have to get rid of this fear of being yourself, and for that you need to learn how to relax. Which brings me to...

It's only when you're completely in the zone that you produce your best work. Your biggest lack of confidence comes from your own dissatisfaction in your writing. You read it and you think it's utter shit. You're disgusted by it, especially after reading something genius. How is it possible to begin thinking you can start writing again? What's the point? You want to give up. And you're wound up, you're really really tight. Yet there are these moments when you get in the zone, when you forget about your doubts and writing is just happening on its own. You feel completely relaxed, nothing bothers you. How do you get to this state? People have different means, some use booze, some take walks, some use stronger means, some stand on their head, some shoot flamingo zombies. No matter what your method is, I can suggest you another one that doesn't involve any stimulants, but will kill two birds with one stone. Write every day, A LOT. Block out as much time as you can, at least 1 hour uninterrupted time (preferably 4), and stick to it. Write every day in that timeframe until you build a habit. It doesn't matter what you write about. If you have writer's block, write about how it sucks having writer's block, complain all you want. I read somewhere that it takes 21 days to create a habit, and as long to break it. That's just 3 weeks, you have to endure only 3 weeks before it will start flowing. What will happen is, your body will get attuned to your daily writing time, and, BAM, suddenly you'll be able to catch that zone moment. The more of this you have, the more confident you'll get in your own ability, the more relaxed you'll feel, because your writing will start happening on its own.

Have someone in your camp who will always tell you your writing rocks. Let's be honest, it takes a village. You might think you're alone in this writing endeavor of yours, but you're not. You have family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, whoever. Some of them must know that you're writing. Find one person who either really loves you or your writing or both and is willing to praise you no matter what shit you write. Because when you start out, you're still learning, and how can you tell someone who is still learning that their skill sucks? You can't. Like my boyfriend told me several days ago, and I tweeted it because he is too shy when it comes to tweeting (I'm still trying to break his arm to do it), so I tweeted it, would you tell a baby that is learning to walk, hey, baby, your walking sucks? No. You encourage the baby, you hold baby's hands, you guide the baby, and you applause at every step. Same with writing. When you're learning, you need encouragement. I try to tweet at least several times a day something like YOU CAN WRITE THAT NOVEL I KNOW IT or some other stuff like that to hopefully encourage you, that is, if I'm myself am not in a bad place that day, which sometimes I am. If you don't have anyone in your life who could support you like this, you can still build confidence in your writing, but it will be much harder. If you want me to be your support, just shout, and I will ping you as often as I can, giving you love.

Finish your book no matter the cost. That is perhaps the most important confidence builder. Finish that book. You have to. Print it, I don't care where or how, but print it. Hold it in your hands. Take pictures of yourself holding your book in your hands. Blast it on all your social networks, glow in your friends' congratulations. Nothing gives you a boost like people cheering you on. All you have to do is finish that first book. After that it will be easier. It's still tough, but it's much much easier. I'm writing my fourth novel right now, ROSEHEAD, although since my first three books, SIREN SUICIDES, grew out of one book, you could consider it my second. I'm still struggling with confidence, but it's eons from where it was a year ago. I assume, I hope, one year from now I will feel better, and better, and more sure of myself, that is, if I'm still able to write full time, which is a whole another story as I'm running out of my savings in 3 months, and, well, I'll be fucked unless I do a successful Kickstarter project. Well, not to bother you with my personal pains here, please, please, please, make sure you finish writing what you started. 

There are many more little ways for boosting your confidence as a writer. The one I really like is surrounding myself with great art, looking at awesome photographs, or paintings, or listen to awesome music. It seems to me if my fellow artists were able to produce beautiful art, I can produce beautiful art. Or, I save and read reviews of my books, the reviews that I really liked. I also open up one of my books at random and read a sentence or two. Out of context, it usually sounds good, and I think, wow, I can actually write? Did I really write this? And, well, my biggest confidence booster is my boyfriend who reads to me every night aloud what I wrote during the day, enacting the characters. And because ROSEHEAD is very different from SIREN SUICIDES, in that it's sarcastic, we both laugh a lot, and that laughter keeps me going the next day.