Category Archives: Personal

Dissertation update: Week 9

I got a bit of feedback from my supervisor earlier in the week on the most recent draft. Still need more of the city in the description. So on Wednesday morning I added 1400 words describing the first trip Lucie and Robbie take from Nettleham to Washingborough adding lots of details about the route and scenery.

Google Maps is a life saver! I’d mostly remembered the route correctly but it helped to have it mapped out with images.

Apparently the essay is good now. I just need to get everything arranged properly for the final presentation, provided my supervisor is happy with the creative piece.

I’m other writing news, I managed a thousand words this morning and a read through of everything I’d written so far of Her Last Death. I’m up to 21949 words now. I’m hoping to reinstate my 1000 words a day policy but it depends on what else is going on. I’m currently achy as hell but I can’t decide why. I think I’m going to do nothing this weekend.

In reading news, I’ve read one of the London Mysteries I’m reviewing a week today, and my copies of Wrecker and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot which I’ll be reviewing later in the month have arrived.

I’m what else I’m doing news, my rainbow draft excluder is coming along nicely, the garden is beginning to pick up and my cross-stitch is looking okay. I’ve been swimming and to the AAF café this week. That’s probably why I ache, I’ve pushed myself a bit. Oh, and next week I meet my support worker!

Anchor chains

I was laid in bed thinking last night about the connections we make with other people, especially our families. My brain came up with a metaphor. I get metaphorical at times, it helps me understand the world.

Our links to family are the anchor we’re born with, keeping us firmly in place. We learn to know who we are and where we are, just the basics, a starting point. That’s our port of anchor, our home. Eventually we grow up, and want to sail away, so we haul in the anchor and head out to sea. We take our anchor with us, a security against losing ourselves. Got lost? Drop your anchor, check your compass and charts, rest and then head back out on your journey, safe in the knowledge that you can stop and rest if you need to. You can go home if you need to, to repair the anchor, replace the mooring ropes, get a decent cup of tea.

Sometimes the rope is rotten and the chain rusted. It snaps in time, and you flail around unconnected until someone throws you a new rope, and you can get yourself a new anchor. You might have tried to keep going, with that rusty anchor chain and the fraying rope, hoping to repair it soon, but never being able to. The break, though inevitable, still comes as a shock.

If you’re lucky, you have a few spares, ready and willing to help hold you steady (friends). If not, you’re thrown about on the waves, struggling to get to shore. This is how I think of those with abusive families. From observation, the rope, to an outsider, is fatally flawed, but the sailor keeps sailing, hoping one day things will change but they never do. The rope gets more frayed, the anchor chain rustier. Eventually it breaks, it was going to, but the break is painful for the sailor because they’ve relied for so long on the faulty equipment. This is the part of your brain and society that reinforces the message that says “No, you mustn’t cut of your narcissistic/abusive/controlling mother/father/sister/brother, they’re family.”, or the abusive person that tells them they have no one else, that none will ever love them, look after them, the way the abusive person does, even though common sense and your friends say “Run away as far and as fast as you can. Cut off all contact, they’re bad for you.”.

The fact is, the anchor – the abusive family member – doesn’t care, it’s doing its own thing and now at least it isn’t being hauled around by/constantly connected to the ‘demanding’ sailor. Oh, it might wish you were still there, but only so they can continue abusing you. They’ll say you cut the rope, it’s your fault they left, but that’s just deflection. They were rotten to start with.

Leave the anchor, deep and lost on the seas.

Sail away and find a new way to get to shore.

Call for help.

If you have spare ropes (friends) that’ll hold you for a while, you can tie up elsewhere, find another anchor, one you choose, rather than one foisted on you. Maybe the old ropes and anchor stopped you from getting spares, (social isolation) and you struggle to get to shore.

Call for help.

Someone will answer, maybe they’ll lend you a temporary anchor, just until you find yourself a new one. This is a support group, or a therapist, that sort of thing.

Some people have perfectly fine anchors and ropes, strong, unfreyed, uncorroded, and still choose to cut themselves loose, leaving a dangling rope and a lost anchor. They have their own reasons, even if they don’t make any sense from the outside. They might have other anchors, ‘better’ ones, waiting to be used; or they might believe their perfectly fine anchors and rope are damaged and they need to be thrown away.

Or, maybe they just want to go on an adventure, are tired of being in one place, feel stuck or scared. So they cut their mooring ropes and sail away. Maybe everything will go well, they find temporary moorings, borrow new anchors and rope, and eventually come back. Full of stories, ready to fish up their old anchor, clean it off and start again. And maybe they’ll need help. Maybe, they’ll discover they left the anchor on the seabed for too long and it’s rusted and too far gone to be cleaned up and reused; maybe someone else fished it out, appreciated that it was a fine anchor and decided to make it their own. So, disappointed, they have to get a new anchor. Maybe they’ll keep the one they abandoned but tried to recover as a memory or souvenir, or they’ll see it hanging from another ship’s anchor chain, having been rescued soon after being abandoned, and feel sad they’ve lost something they hadn’t really had the chance to appreciate. And they’ll sail on.

Make of that what you will. My brain in a strange place.

Non-verbal communication works better for some people.

I have a headache and I’m coughing and stuffy. It’s either a cold or heyfever. Choices, choices.

Anyway, I’m whiling away my time reading, as usual now I’ve sent in another email with my dissertation, and today’s choice is one of my book shopping spree purchases: Odd Girl Out, by Laura James.

Reading it, I’ve found so many things, thoughts, feelings, that I recognise. That I’ve felt or experienced, despite our different backgrounds and upbringing. The oddness of other people, not understanding the social rules, being immersed in books, not understanding the whole football thing, practical empathy, being overwhelmed by other people’s feelings, especially negative feelings, not quite getting why people lie, there’s so much!

She talks about the irony of an autistic woman in a communications profession – she’s a journalist. Communication deficits are a hallmark of autism. The fact is, we communicate well in writing. I prefer to write than talk, because I can be very precise in writing. I mean what I write. There’s no need to assume otherwise. If I’m being satirical, humorous or sarcastic I can indicate that either directly with a symbol, or with the sentence structure. It’s also solid, I have information in writing, so I can refer back to it if I get confused or need reassurance. Or to win an argument.

Speech is different. If I say something, other people have a habit of deciding the meaning based on my face or body language, rather than the actual words used. My face does not always show my feelings. My words get jumbled up if I’m stressed or answering an unexpected question. I can’t always hear and process speech. I forget what’s been said or what I’ve said. Sometimes. Beware, I also have the ability to recall conversations from months or years ago with accuracy. Sometimes I lose the ability to speak, especially under stress, or if I’m heading into a shutdown. It’s very frustrating.

So, because autists have problems with verbal communication, our ability to communicate at all is written off as deficient. This attitude keeps the non-speaking from being given any respect at all, and those of us who do speak are told we’re too good at communicating to actually be autistic when we go for a diagnosis. It’s not just doctors either, when autistic people advocate for themselves they get push back from certain people – they can’t possibly be autistic if they can write a tweet. *massive eye-roll* Or they must be ‘high functioning’ and don’t understand the experience of ‘low functioning’ people. Almost invariably, when asked what they mean by ‘low functioning’, not speaking is included in the criteria. *again, eye roll*

Just because there’s a block between mind and mouth doesn’t mean there’s a block between mind and hand, or low intellectual ability, or low competancy. People need to stop assuming speech is the only valid means of communication. Give people the means to communicate and actually read what they’re saying.

Right, now I’ve got that off my chest I’m going back to reading my book.

Over 500 followers!

How did that happen? You crept up on me! It’s taken almost 7 years, since starting this blog in mid-2011, to get to 507 followers. I don’t run the biggest book blog on the planet, but I hope I keep my followers amused and informed. I was surprised the first time someone who wasn’t a friend or family member decided to read and follow my blog. I’m still surprised every time I get an email telling me someone has followed my blog. Thanks, it’s appreciated.

Screenshot 2018-05-31 21.38.10

I really started to focus on the book blogging in 2014 and saw a massive increase in visitors. With odd dips, my visitor numbers and followers have steadily increased and I’ve made some lovely booky contacts. Since my mental health crash in 2015, and subsequent inability to work a ‘normal’ job, I’ve been able to devote more time to reading, and my own writing. It helps with my recovery from serious mental illnesses, and with processing my new diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome/ASC.

So thanks, everyone, for your support and comments. More book reviews and book-related posts coming in June. Two crime novels and an historical adventure this month, plus my birthday, the weekly dissertation updates and any bonus stuff I feel like writing. I’m reading a book about a German First World War spy, called Regina Diana, from Pen & Sword, at the moment, so expect a review at some point soon.

 

 

 

If you want to help keep me in notebooks, pens, food, gas, the usual stuff, you can donate through PayPal using:

paypal.me/RosemarieCawkwell

 

 

 

Diagnosis time and reflections.

Hiiiiiii

After my last post on Wednesday, I thought (some of?) my readers would be interested to know the results of my trip to the ASC Diagnostic Team on Thursday afternoon.

Continue reading “Diagnosis time and reflections.”

Dissertation: Week 1 – I’ve finally started ‘Granny Killer’ (provisional title)

I’m writing this to keep myself on track. I had a good first few days, until Monday. I wrote about 7000 words between last Wednesday and this Monday, but now I appear to have ground to a halt.

7000 words isn’t bad, I suppose, for the first draft, and I keep thinking of things that need changing when I write the second draft on my laptop. The first draft is hand written, in my notebook. The notebook has a fairy on the cover that looks curiously like Liv Tyler, but they added wings to make her less Arwen-like; probably for copyright reasons.

Sorry, back to the topic in hand. My dissertation. The creative piece has to be 13,000 words of consecutive prose from a new piece of fiction, and the creative analysis part has to be 2000 words. For that I’ll be concentrating on three areas – the conventions of crime fiction, the use of real crimes, criminals and detectives as inspiration by crime writers, and regionalism in crime novels – especially in Britain.

At 7,000 words I’m half-way there on the creative piece. I have arranged to do my dissertation supervisions by email, so I don’t have to travel to Lincoln. I can’t afford to; the student loan has all been spent on fees, travel, food, council tax, other bills. Basically surviving while attempting to study. Once a month I have to type up what I’ve written and email it to my dissertation supervisor for detailed, substantial feedback. That should be helpful. I hope.

Just looked out the window and noticed the bin. It’s bin day tomorrow and I haven’t had the bin emptied for four weeks, so I suppose I’d better go and put it out. And tomorrow is also my Post-Diagnostic Support Session with the psychologist. I don’t actually have official confirmation of my diagnosis yet and she wouldn’t even hint at it in her emails last week.

I’m anxious. If I get the suspected diagnosis of ASC – Asperger’s Syndrome, there’s nothing they can do to help, I’ll be passed on to a charity that might possibly be able to provide some information and support. If they decide on a different diagnosis, I’m back to square one, trying to work out why my brain doesn’t work the same way as other people and feeling like the odd one out all the time, with no explanation for my anxiety and depression, or my limited social skills, my dislike of changes to routine or plans, my pacing, fidgeting and tapping, and on a really bad day, rocking back and forth in my chair (sorry! everyone at uni, can’t help myself.).

It’s not uncommon for autistic women to be misdiagnosed as OCD or BPD, or ignored completely, and I don’t know what the psychiatrist’s qualifications or experience is, so now I’m wondering if he’ll dismiss everything he’s seen, heard and read because he’s one of those that doesn’t believe autistic women exist. Maybe I’m unnecessarily torturing myself, but anxiety lies and so does depression, so I don’t know what to think and I’m probably not going to sleep much and be a horrible person tomorrow.

Anyway, time to get offline and do something else. I’ve noticed a distinct increase in my anxiety whenever I spend more than a few minutes online without purpose, and especially if I go on social media. I had to go out food shopping this afternoon so I didn’t get my nap either, so I’m frazzled and tired. Also, my spelling is atrocious right now. Considering going up to my bedroom to cuddle with the dogs and Wabby, and have an early night.

Conversation; or I can’t do small talk

No, really I can’t. I find it boring and shallow. Unless the conversation is going to quickly move on to something deeper, I’d rather not talk at all. From my reading around the subject of my provisional ASC diagnosis last year, it would seem that it’s normal for me, but possibly not for most people.

Continue reading “Conversation; or I can’t do small talk”

University update: Week 7

I haven’t written much of anything about university this year. That’s because, after the first two weeks this term I haven’t been. For various reasons the workshops have been cancelled.

Week 3 – tutor sick, no replacement available

Week 4 – tutor sick, no replacement available

Week 5 – reading week

Week 6 – cancelled due to snow

Week 7 : Authorised absence

Only this week have I been responsible for me not turning up, and that’s because I had my first ASC Diagnostic team appointment. I arranged an authorised absence for Wednesday.

According to a colleague, I didn’t miss much; the tutor was still not up to snuff so he showed a film called Fat man on a beach by B. S. Johnson. This isn’t Bloody Stupid Johnson, famed architect and inventor of Ankh-Morpork, but another with the same initials. The film was quite daft, but the discussion got philosophical, and all I can think is did STP know of this film and film maker? Because something that obscure would appeal to him.

There are two weeks left before the end of term, my assessment booklets have arrived – they’re getting the proof copies, not ones I plan to sell. After the Easter break there are three weeks of workshops and I understand that at some point there will be three extra sessions to make up for the three cancelled workshops.

Then it’s on to the dissertation.

I probably won’t be reviewing many books between May and September.

Enjoy your weekend, I will be reading books and cuddling my hounds.

New Year’s Eve and I’m listing the good things

So, there’s three hours of 2017 left and I’ve been thinking of the good things that have happened this year.

  • I published the first two novels in the Fire Series in June and December;
  • I survived my first year of my MA in Creative Writing;
  • I’ve reviewed more books this year than last;
  • I’ve made useful connections with book publishers and promoters;
  • I made some progress, medically, getting my MI and autism diagnoses and decent medication;
  • I survived moving house!

I’s a short list, but it’s progress.