I Started Writing Again. ✍️

Trauma has always led me to writing. I used writing as an escape, a way to express my thoughts and explore who I am, and just be. With writing, I don’t have to pretend to be fine or feel anything beyond what I’m actually feeling in the moment.

So I’m not surprised that everything I’ve been through in the past year has led to me picking up my story again.

Years ago, I thought that I needed more life experience, but it turns out that I just didn’t have the confidence required to write in the way that I needed to write. I felt like everything had to be perfect, so I couldn’t start it unless I had everything mapped out. Now, I realize that my writing process varies from other people’s, and that’s okay. I write my stories and snippets, and then I piece them together and write the glue that holds them all together when the time is right.

Current writing projects

There are several writing projects I’ve worked on in the past five years, but I have narrowed down to three different writing projects to work on currently. These are the stories in most passionate about right now, so they are priority.

Every title is just a working title.

1. Gutter Punch

Personal memoir I started writing last October about all the abuse I’ve endured coming full circle and staring me in the face, the nuances of this experience, and how I’m working through it so I can be worthy of calling myself Jane Lively. Because my chosen name has a meaning and purpose, and was not decided on a whim.

2. Autistic J

Children’s book series. I know the title, and I have 77 story ideas for it. Children’s books are lacking in autistic child representation. I want to change that. I know the child’s name, and no — it’s not Jane.

3. Everwood Diaries

I have two series ideas, similarly to how an author has done a parent series with child series. I don’t remember names currently and have horrendous cell reception.

I don’t know if this will just be the working title of the parent series or if I will call it the Everwood Universe.

This story is one in the making for years, probably even since I was a child even if I didn’t know any of the characters I’ve made today. Having dissociative identity disorder (DID) gives me a unique perspective on life that not a lot of people have, and I can’t refrain from that showing up in my writing.

Everwood is the main setting, the town, where everything goes down. The characters have become my darlings over the years in a way that I can’t just change them or forget about them.

Because they’re characters with lives representative of the goings-on in my DID system’s “headspace”.

I didn’t understand what DID was, and so I turned to writing to make sense of what I now know was my brain’s way of coping with trauma.

My writing style reflects this. 🤌

That doesn’t mean that I live in an alternate reality or the characters are based on me/my alters — just that my writing is greatly inspired by my trauma and the thought experiments that have come of coping with and working through that trauma.

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Right now, I’m just writing. But I don’t intend to go the traditional publishing route. Removing the potential to trigger my rejection-sensitive dysphoria and lack of creative direction is motivating and helps me feel confident writing as well. 💖

I’m trying Georgie’s #BlogEveryDamnDay thing on for size. No idea how much I’ll blog, but it seems fun. ✨