: Re: Can I be a writer, with a mental illness? I want to be a writer, but I have struggled with Schizoaffective Disorder for quite some time. Some of the symptoms of the disorder are amotivation

@Welton431

Vote Up Vote Down

I, too, deal with schizoaffective disorder, and I have written one novel, which was for me a real accomplishment. I understand what you mean about problems with motivation. One of the reasons I wrote the novel was to see if I really had it in me to complete such an undertaking.

Here's one thing I did to keep me going. I've learned that I'm somewhere between a discovery writer (who figures out what the story is by writing it) and an outliner. Specifically, I need to have some overarching ideas of the plot and structure before I can sit down and write. What I did to keep going was to pick a milestone, something important that needed to happen in the story, and write in a way that the story headed in the general, maybe a little meandering, direction of the milestone, but not go straight to it.

This tackled the biggest struggle I have in writing: being stuck because I don't know what to write immediately next. I swear the meds I take have left me less smart and less imaginative than I was before starting them.

Another piece of advice I learned and use successfully, not just in writing but in my work as a programmer is to stop work in the middle of something. It gives me something to do immediately next when I resume working and gets me back into the flow.

For what it's worth, I'm currently writing my first murder mystery, with an accidental detective who is schizophrenic.

(0)

Login to post a comment!