Are any of you suffering from the post-holiday blahs? Or maybe the winter blues? I learned last week that there’s a name for it: dysthymia. I was under the impression that dysthymia is a lower level depression that lasts for months or years, but I learned last week that it’s also used to refer to recurrent low moods that follow a cycle, like Seasonal Affective Disorder. And here I thought it was just the post-holiday crash or, as I sometimes call it, melancholy. Now I find out that something else encompasses it. Interesting.
Mental health is an ever evolving field, and still relatively new (when compared with others). While I did choose not to pursue a career directly in that field and I don’t keep up with the updates as much since I graduated from college back in 1997, I do still find the field of psychology fascinating. In fact, my degree is quite useful in a day to day basis, especially when it comes to my writing. It’s particularly helpful in character and plot development.
Such is the case here. A casual search on dysthymia lead to other articles, which got me thinking about the feedback from my beta readers on Singularity and wondering if incorporating more of that into the manuscript would be a fix. More research, more brainstorming, and even rereading a couple of other scifi books I’ve loved in the past that use mental illness as part of the characterization got the muse going. Now, after a couple of weeks of research and brainstorming, I’m almost ready to start rewrites on Singularity.
Talk about falling down the rabbit hole! A conversation last week led to exactly what I needed to do a massive rewrite
of the manuscript, but I believe these proposed changes will address the beta reader concerns and make it a magnificent novel.
Such is the life of a writer. You never know what little thing will open up the well of creativity. It’s usually small things like a comment in a conversation, or something you read. One thing leads to another, and becomes a small thing making up the bigger things in life.
All of that, thanks to a conversation with a friend and the Internet. Yay, technology!
That’s all today. Take care, and have a great rest of the week.
Bye!
Mental health is an ever evolving field, and still relatively new (when compared with others). While I did choose not to pursue a career directly in that field and I don’t keep up with the updates as much since I graduated from college back in 1997, I do still find the field of psychology fascinating. In fact, my degree is quite useful in a day to day basis, especially when it comes to my writing. It’s particularly helpful in character and plot development.
Such is the case here. A casual search on dysthymia lead to other articles, which got me thinking about the feedback from my beta readers on Singularity and wondering if incorporating more of that into the manuscript would be a fix. More research, more brainstorming, and even rereading a couple of other scifi books I’ve loved in the past that use mental illness as part of the characterization got the muse going. Now, after a couple of weeks of research and brainstorming, I’m almost ready to start rewrites on Singularity.
Talk about falling down the rabbit hole! A conversation last week led to exactly what I needed to do a massive rewrite
of the manuscript, but I believe these proposed changes will address the beta reader concerns and make it a magnificent novel.
Such is the life of a writer. You never know what little thing will open up the well of creativity. It’s usually small things like a comment in a conversation, or something you read. One thing leads to another, and becomes a small thing making up the bigger things in life.
All of that, thanks to a conversation with a friend and the Internet. Yay, technology!
That’s all today. Take care, and have a great rest of the week.
Bye!
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