Does anyone have any advice on or experience with writing a book on an experience of schizophrenia? There are 7000 books related to the topic of schizophrenia in Amazon. Haha like we need another one? Maybe we do, and another and another. What do you think?
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Maybe find the most successful SZ authors and message them about tips on writing a good book?
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Im trying to be a writer too. Ive only written short stories, no novels. But i would say that just try and write so many words a day. Progress probably feels slow when writing a book. Hemmingway wrote about 500 words a day, so dont try and push yourself too hard.
Good luck though! Sounds like a great project!
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Great idea! Thanks!!!
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I was on course to be an English major, focused on writing. I like the advice that it’s best to flesh it out first, from beginning to finish, without editing it. Get the skeleton down on paper and then you can make changes from there. A lot of people get caught up editing their first paragraph to death and get burnout soon afterwards.
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I’ve been thinking of taking a course that guides students through the process. What kind of writing do you feel most comfortable with? Thanks for the encouragement.
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I mostly write dark mystery. Stories like shutter island and secret window amaze me, would love to make some an eighth as good as those stories.
Thank you for that valuable advice. Do you think we need to explain to people what the experience of schizophrenia is like?
I think it’s very valuable information. I read a book written by a doctor, and it was nice, but it was still a book written by a doctor. Hearing it from a patient’s perspective would be preferable for me. It might not make a lot of money, but you might get fifty bucks off it over time. The important thing is people can get it cheap and read it and it might help somebody, I suppose.
I have just avoided it because I’m still recovering and very critical of my writing. I recently took off a short story I wrote in college and am dusting it off. My mother keeps pushing me to write about the disorder.
How about a collection of stories, memoirs, etc. by authors living with schizophrenia?
You have a lot to share.
An example of something I wrote…
After everyone was asleep I went to the garage to get a bottle of wine, like I did every night, and quickly drank it. Then I got another and drank it and then another and drank that too. Finally I started to feel in control of my thoughts, at least as much as the aliens that controlled us would allow me to think. (Only I was aware of them and their control.) And then I got a nosebleed. It gushed so I ran upstairs to the bathroom and locked myself in. The blood dripped all over the floor and the toilet and I tried to stop it with my hands that were bloodied as was my face and throat and neck. I realized that this was an excellent opportunity. The thought that “Blood is sacred and shouldn’t be wasted.” came into my mind… from my alien spiritual fathers. So I started wiping it up off myself and the floor with tissue and threw the tissues in the toilet and watched the blood mix with the water into pinky rose swirls in the toilet. The Iraq war was on and there was a lot of blood there I thought and my blood in the toilet could connect with it through the ocean and rain and clouds and the recycling of water when I flushed it so I prayed “Father please protect myself, my family and my friends and those that protect us and bring the world to peace.” and flushed. Then as I cleaned up I became mesmerized by the blood smearing on the floor. After that I went downstairs and read the Bible for further guidance. There was lots to do since I only got 2 hours of sleep every day.
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There’s a lot of great examples of writing in blogs I have stumbled across while searching for everything related to schizophrenia. Oftentimes paragraphs like the one you wrote are used once or maybe twice along a larger narrative. A lot of it is usually written in the retrospective sense, with less detail.
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I’ll give you a famous writer’s (I believe it was Mark Twain) advice:
There are 3 rules to writing:
- Write
- Write
- Write
Another one from him involved writing for no pay for so many years and if you continue to get no pay beyond that whitling is what you were made for. (I used to have the exact quotes but lost them.)
It’s clear I lack technical training since I have to guess what you are talking about
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