5 Top Tips To Keep Writing With Your Mental Illness
Everyone has mental health, and we need to look after it just as much as other parts of our lives.
When having a mental illness, everything can become much harder BUT that does not mean you are unable to do things. A part of this is finding new ways to tackle a task.
Below we will be discussing what you can do so that you are able to start and or continue writing – working with your mental illness.
Remember, writing a book is hard for everyone.
Get your hands on 27 chapters to write a book, to gain sectioned information that helps you easily stay on track and know what to write next.
Table of Contents
1 Reframing
Think about how much you’ve done rather than how much you should have or wanted to do. We are our worse critic, when continuously being negative about an experience, it makes it so much harder to do. This is why reinforcing positive behaviour and thoughts to your target, writing, will make it easier to accomplish.
For example, when thinking about how little you have written compared to your goal, reframe it to look how much I have wrote and the new ideas you have formed.
When you think about giving up, how little you’ve done or not liking what you’ve written, reframe it. Instead think how you can making writing easier,
2 Showing Up
When creating a new habit, in this case, writing. It seems like a massive and unattainable goal for many. Start small but showing up every day (or scheduled time you’d like to write), just for 5 minutes. You’ll get your ideas out with ink or curser. This small step looks like you won’t be accomplishing much at all, however, the hardest thing a lot of the time is just starting.
By ensuring you keep coming back every time to write, you are building the first sturdy block to continue your writing habit. Starting small and often makes you automatically come back for more.
After a few weeks, bump up the writing time to 10 –15 minutes. See how it goes. The fact you have kept up something for so long will do wonders for your mental health.
Remember, it takes on average 66 days to form a new and automatic behaviour. And you are going to breeze through it.
3 Not Being Overwhelmed
There are a lot of aspects when it comes to writing a book to think about. How will I:
- Create a character’s personality?
- Where will the story take place?
- What is driving the story forward?
- Which themes run throughout the story?
- What kind of history or beliefs do the people in the story have?
- And many more.
Planning out your novel takes away the stress of forming it as you write, wondering what you have to do next. It can be counterproductive for your mental health to not break up this huge task into bite-sized pieces. Avoiding the sense of being overloaded and feeling bad when you want to quit, because you can’t handle it.
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It also helps you positively respond to the work you have done. With planning, you can not only write faster and more effectively but now you are able to see every step that you’ve accomplished and finished.
For example, you have split x number of days to create your character and backstory, now you can tick that off as completed. Next, you want to create a timeline of events to keep your story on track, tick that as finished. Also, refer back to it when you have written scenes and chapters to know what you need to do next.
4 Don’t Quit – Take A Break
Just because you are prepared with plans, are able to think positively and are able to go to your designated area on a scheduled basis, doesn’t mean you will be able to write every time.
Another way of putting your mental health first is taking breaks, decent breaks. Sometimes you just need to recharge as you are creatively drained, or life has just thrown a lot your way recently.
You aren’t failing, you are listening to your body’s needs.
So, before you quit, try:
- Taking a few days to a week off
- Refill your creative tank
- Get someone to go over your story or character development
- Take a month off if you need it!
- If you still ‘need’ to be working or you panic, think of a new story, write bloopers, switch up your writing routine.
5 … Writing Is Hard For Everyone
I have seen people say “No one will publish me because I have X illness.” And look…there are awful agents out there and narrow-minded publishers. Good writing and good authors get snubbed because they’re “too different”. Not denying. It’s not fair and it’s not right either. People gatekeep and diverse authors and books are often turned away because “oh we already have one of those”. (As if every book is the same?!)
But also: Writing is hard for everyone. I mean really hard. I’ve thought of my atypical brain as a reason I haven’t gotten an opportunity. But I do think. more often than not, mentally ill authors have the same fails other authors do: bad timing and our writing needing to get better.
There’s a difference between “no one gets my writing” and “my writing needs to get better.”
The point is: when your brain says “this is too hard because of who we are” = your reply needs to be refusal. You’ve got this.
Good luck in your writing journey!