Five years ago, I wrote a fairytale for my partner for our third anniversary. You can find that here. For our eighth(!) anniversary, I wrote a companion story, which you can find right here. You don't have to read the other one first, but it helps.

Licensed under creative commons BY-NC-SA.

( This Is Not A Fairytale )

I think I saw someone tweet or post about tools you use as a writer, and I wondered if I had any specific to my current theme of talking about mental illness. Turns out, I do. See, my day-to-day peace of mind relies very heavily on two meds which have both good and bad sides. I take fluoxetine (commonly known as Prozac) for my depression, and pregabalin (Lyrica) for my anxiety.

Whatever Robin Hobb has to say about it, I couldn't be me without medication (right now). Screw that "will I ever be myself again" -- if you've ever had medication make a difference for you, you know it isn't a case of it "damping down" the real you. It can give you yourself back. Nearly a year after starting on pregabalin, and I'm doing things I wasn't able to do from being very small. And it's not because pregabalin muscles on in here and takes over for me -- it's still me, it's just a me without the adrenalin kicking in over the stupidest of things.

But sometimes to get this stuff you do have to pay, and sometimes I get worried that I'll pay with my abilities as a writer (such as they are). I always had a very good memory, but now I'll put my pen down and be completely unable to find it when I come back five minutes later, because I just cannot remember where it went. Or I'll be looking for a quotation to use in an essay, but I can't find it, because I can't even remember the title of the book it's from.

And words -- ugh! Don't get me started. I did it in yesterday's post: it wasn't a typo, it was a "Lyrica moment" (as I put it). I typed "angle" instead of "ankle", and didn't notice at all. Typing is a matter of muscle memory for me; I simply wouldn't get it wrong by that many keys over. So it was something in my brain that substituted the word 'angle' for 'ankle'. I think that happens to everyone sometimes, but it happens to me appreciably more since I started taking pregabalin.

And from the combination of fluoxetine and pregabalin, I am simply so dopey sometimes. It takes me a long time to wake up, I zone out in the middle of conversations, I need things to be explained to me multiple times...

And my tool for fighting all that, and therefore the most important tool in my kit as a writer, has been crosswords. I've noticed that when I start the day by helping with the crossword in the paper, I continue the day much quicker on my mental feet. So now I don't even wait for the newspaper. As soon as my alarm goes, I'm opening the app on my phone and pulling up a random crossword. I've done it with strategy games, too: Kingdom Rush proved quite useful.

Actually, I guess you could call fluoxetine, pregabalin, and the apps I use to counteract their side effects tools I use for writing. Take out any side of the equation and I suck at life, and therefore at writing.

Moral of the story, if you need one, is not to let your writing be an excuse to avoid medication or some kind of treatment. You could be driving yourself into a brick wall. Maybe it'll take some false starts and you won't be as lucky as me in finding two medications right off the bat that help so much without cutting down your ability to do whatever's most important to you. Maybe you will.

You hear a lot about rules for writing, and what makes someone a real writer. I haven't anything better for today's post, so here's a write-up of my day's brainstorming session on those.

Always watch other people, keep a notebook about things you see and think about: Try having interest in other people when you feel completely dead inside yourself. Just try, I dare you. If you're like me, at best, you won't feel anything. At worst, you'll spiral either into a long self-pity party in which you think about how they're probably so much more successful and happy than you, or you start imagining all the reasons they must hate you. Even if they're a bunch of complete strangers.

Write every day: You think I can write when I can't get dressed?

Write even if it's shit: But... in that state, everything is shit. Even if it isn't. Why waste my time and give my brain reasons to beat me up some more?

Use your depression as inspiration!: This brings to mind Hyperbole and a Half. It's "like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back". You're trying to use your total lack of any positive feeling to create a positive result. Does that really make any sense to you?

If you want to be a real writer, read a lot: I refer you to my own poem, Non-Fiction Mood. Read it, it'll do your writing good.

I'm sure there's more, but these are the ones that annoyed me. The rules annoy me because they're saying, "you have to do things like me or you're not really a writer". They're saying that because I "let" my mental illness keep me from writing, I just don't want it enough.

Well, that's true. In the depths of anxiety and depression, all I want is for the feeling to stop. When you're so frightened that you wish you didn't exist anymore, writing is just about the last thing on your mind. So hey, my criteria for being a real writer, for me, is "keep coming out the other side and starting again".

I had a story idea yesterday. I'm excited.

I haven't been paying much attention to this blog at all and I'm sorry about that, for however many of you are actually reading! Life takes over. In particular, it's amazing how completely a mental illness can take over your life. I have GAD and depression (also pretty generalised!), and sometimes it's all I can do in a week to keep staggering out of bed. Sometimes it's all I can do to make myself get into bed in the first place.

The fact is, I'm never sure how much of my identity to reveal here and how much to hold back; ideally, I don't want to hold back, but if that's the case, then why use a pen name? But I've decided, at least, that my mental illness is going to be out there. It doesn't want that -- these things hide from scrutiny, from consideration, and hate being held up to the light. And society doesn't really want that either, because we so often fall into thinking of Us vs. Them, and mentally ill people are usually among "Them". But I'm a normal person. I'm no stranger than any of you. That person you admire, who is always smiling, always perfectly put together? Maybe she cries as soon as she locks the door on the world at night. Maybe she's gone past knowing how to cry. That person who embarrasses you by talking to themselves in public might be CEO of a company in a few years time. There's no easy division.

So, I'm not willing to hide or let myself be hidden. For the next week, or as long as I can, I'm going to post every day about something related to mental illness. A book review, a personal piece, fiction, non-fiction. Links to other people's posts about the same.

All of it will be posted under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA: you're free to share or remix this work, with attribution.

The first post in this series is a poem. I'm not sure how much explanation-sauce you like with your poetry (and there's some pun on sauce and source in there, too...), so I've placed some thoughts on what I wrote under the cut at the bottom.

Non-Fiction Mood

You know what that means.
Things close in.
There's no world beyond the wardrobe,
no rainbow road to take me away,
no fairy ring in the woods.
Friends are blank,
incurious,
go on their adventures alone.
Simile, metaphor, a perfect adjective,
all dry as a shrivelled heart
of someone who has never loved.
Tell me about wars,
the methylation of DNA,
the long slow excavation of a single tomb.
In the wonders of this world,
let me glimpse another.

( Explanation )

I still love playing with villanelles, even though I haven't been writing much of late, and even though poetry isn't exactly my forte.

I'm going to stop using flattr, at least for now; I've earned very little from it, which I know is my own fault for not posting very much or getting involved with other bloggers and writers. Still, if you appreciate my work, I'm a little strapped for cash right now and £3.40 would get me the bus fare for anywhere in my fair city...

The Immortal Days of Camelot

I saw Arthur riding, with his banner flying and his head held high,
When he was young, and I was a simple farmer's boy,
And it seemed war was glorious, and that Arthur and his men could never die.

The queen was tall and gracious and met everyone's eye,
And Camelot was tall and fair and full of joy,
And I saw Arthur riding, with his banner flying and his head held high.

The old kings rose up and challenged him, and they came riding by,
And Arthur rode to meet them and end their treacherous ploy,
And it seemed war was glorious, and that Arthur and his men could never die.

The queen stood accused of treason, and her death was nigh,
Her pyre built; her sins like that woman of Troy.
Still I saw Arthur riding, with his banner flying and his head held high.

And I saw Lancelot riding too, saw his greyed face and heard him sigh,
And he said the queen's name, and swore her enemies he'd destroy.
Yet still it seemed war was glorious, and that Arthur and his men could never die.

And I was the one who left fair England, serving Arthur as a spy,
Told him of Mordred's treason. And there, no longer a boy,
I saw Arthur riding, with his banner flying and his head held high;
Could it seem then that war was glorious, and that Arthur and his men would never die?


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

I'm finally back to working on the series of short stories I intended to get published in time for my mother's birthday (which was in February). I can never seem to work during the semester: there's always too much else to think about, so that the stories can't percolate properly in the back of my head.

Anyway, I'm at work again at last, and have just finished the first of a new set of stories to fit into that anthology. Hopefully, they're going to pick up the thread of Mordred and Agravain, which was left somewhat hanging originally, while I focused on Gawain, Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere. I just did a retelling of the story of Erec and Enide. So far, I've tried to stick close to my sources: I even refused to write properly about the cauldron in my substitute for a grail story, the voyage to Caer Sidi, because what we've got says they don't achieve it. Only seven return from Caer Sidi, and one gets the distinct impression they're not triumphant.

Which is great, except I just identified Erec with Gaheris, on very little grounds, if any. Oh, I know other contemporary writers have done it -- one at least: Sarah Zettel -- but it doesn't quite sit right with the work I've been doing so far. At least in theory. But in practice, to me, it feels right. It fits. It leads on to other stories and links back to others. It makes the story of Erec and Enide urgent to the reader, because they already care about Gawain and Gareth, and Gaheris is their brother.

The thing about Arthurian literature is that it's not a tapestry executed by one person, but more like a patchwork quilt made up of whatever each author had to hand. You can't match your colours and thread to all of the others, because everyone used their own material and what's there already doesn't match. You just have to pick and choose what works for you -- and that's one of the things that appeals to me about Arthurian literature, and about doing my own retellings. It's a riotous mass of colour and life, held together by the basic framework which everyone knows.

So, I don't think I'm apologising for stealing Gereint/Erec's story and giving it to someone else.

Next up: a reworking of Yvain, working in a backstory from a Scottish ballad, which is also sort of cheating when it comes to sticking to my sources. I'll leave you to wonder about that one, at least for now.

On a long car journey today, I ended up half asleep -- it was so warm today, and I was in the passenger's seat -- and two songs in particular caught my attention and mingled in my sleepy brain. They were Dar Williams' The Great Unknown and Karine Polwart's Better Things. This story is less optimistic than either of those about technological development, although I am not myself overly pessimistic. It's non-specific about what technology it refers to, as I don't want it to be pinned to anything in particular.

The title is from The Great Unknown, and neatly references something else within the story too.

( Now It's Ticking )





Now It's Ticking by Rhian Crockett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Been reading poetry and prose-poetry today, and I've felt like writing for a few days, so I sat down to do something. Especially since I've had so little time to pay attention to this blog, and it needs content! It's about Lancelot and Elaine...

(Also, look! I made myself an icon out of the draft artwork.)

( The Traitor's Heart )




The Traitor's Heart by Rhian Crockett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

So someday -- eventually -- I do intend to make at least an ebook of my Arthurian stories, as a little collection. Maybe even with the bits of Arthurian poetry I've written. One of the problems is cover art, which my wonderful mother is out to solve. Below the cut are her drafts of what Camelot looks like!

( Camelot )

Of course, neither of these are "good enough", according to her, anyway, because it has to be "worthy" of the content. Hmmm.


This work by A. Crockett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Lightning quick post -- I've put an offer up for original fiction on help_japan, here. Will do fairytale retellings, Arthurian legends, LGBT-ified retellings...

A couple more examples of my writing for you, as promised in that comment.

( Click to read 'A Warning Note', a rondeau )

( Click to read three microfictions based on the story of the fall of Troy, with commentary )

Please consider bidding for my work in the auction: I will work very hard to ensure that anything you receive once you have donated is the very best work I can do.


This work by Rhian Crockett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.