Everything Is Better With Dragons
Book blogger, Autistic, Probably a Dragon
It’s officially official now. I checked blackboard.
I have passed my MA with Merit. Graduation is 23rd January 2019.
I can’t decide whether to focus on finishing Charlie’s War, Fire Storm and Her Last Death before going on to apply for PhD courses or try and juggle them all.
Morning all. I slept downstairs last night, because the air was too hot in my room. It’s much cooler in the living room. My back aches a bit because the ‘put u up’ bed isn’t the most comfortable, but it makes a change from spending the night sliding down the bed and getting up by rolling on to the floor. My bed is broken.
But, back to the dissertation.
Where did I get to? Did I tell you I’d sent the complete draft to my dissertation supervisor and asked how I make the good essay excellent? I got a response and ad a two week breakdown? Yes, I think I did.
Right then, week before last I decided to tackle it again and got the introduction done before having another breakdown, then last Wednesday I got up early and was suddenly able to write. 2000 words just flowed. Actually, I did some cutting and pasting from the old essay, adding some stuff, took some other stuff out, and produced something.
Honestly, I wasn’t happy with it, but I sent it to the dissertation supervisor anyway.
Yesterday I got a response. The critique is excellent, I’m ‘nearly there’ but the bibliography needs to be longer, twice as long.
Guess what I spent yesterday evening doing? To be fair, I had referenced books but had forgotten to add them to the bibliography, so it wasn’t much work to add them. Then I had to raid my library for the books that had helped with some of my ideas. The thing is, I pick up information from all sorts of books, articles, web pages, talking to people, etc. and synthesise them into a whole picture. But I can’t necessarily tell you were the individual information came from. It’s a bit of a bugger when I have to provide references and reading suggestions…
Anyway, the bibliography is now twice as long, and it may get longer, I have a few doctoral theses to read that I found on the subject of crime fiction. And I’m sure there were some books I borrowed from the university library last year that should go in there too.
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!
A couple of days late, I know, but I was busy Tuesday and spent a lot of Wednesday asleep, recovering.
Anyway. I wrote 2000 words about the representation of autistic women in crime fiction, only to be told by my supervisor that I was doing it wrong. So that essay got put to one side and I re-wrote it, covering a range of subjects in relation to my dissertation. I’ve sent that, and an updated draft of the creative piece off on Wednesday morning.
On Sunday, before all that, I got an email with feedback. As usual, the supervisor doesn’t like Lucie or the murderer. I accepted that there was something flat about the murderer, because in the first 13,000 words I’d been concentrating on setting up the situation and establishing Lucie. What I didn’t appreciate was being told Lucie wasn’t recognisably autistic.
I may have been a bit blunt in my response email:
I have written Lucie based on my own, and other women’s experiences of being autistic. If you are unfamiliar with autistic women it may not be immediately obvious that she is, but to those who know or are autistic women, it is. Current representations of autistic women in popular culture are limited to socially-inept autistic savants, an unrealistic stereotype. The vast majority of autistic women are not Sheldon Cooper with breasts and I’m not writing Lucie as such just because the rest of the world are too ignorant to look past stereotypes created by non-autistic people about autistic people. She needs to be realistic, to widen popular representations of autistic women beyond the ‘autistic savant’-type, because there are autistic police officers and to provide a role model for those autistic women who aren’t Saga Noren. That’s what I’m trying to do with this character.
My description of her autistic traits goes beyond the ‘likes pattern and order’ you mentioned:
- She is described reacting to sensory stimulation in several chapters. Sensory Processing Disorder is a common co-morbid condition, as is anxiety. She mitigates her processing problems with the use of noise-cancelling headphones
- She stims, tapping and running her fingers across patterns and materials
- She blocks out visual stimuli in meetings and in busy rooms so that she can concentrate on her work or the meeting by looking at her computer screen and by building her file fort
- She has hyper focused on the idea that someone at Witham View is the murderer and is ignoring the other lines of enquiry. This is based on her putting together small clues that others have missed, and looking at it from a different angle. Her autism is relevant because it helps her see the case differently.
- She struggles with social interaction and communication, forgetting her carefully learnt ‘scripts’ when tired or stressed, and oversharing personal information with colleagues. This causes conflict with her colleagues and will be a subplot that evolves through the full length novel. This is where her autism is also relevant.
- She has a limited sense of danger – wandering around Lincoln, a place she doesn’t know well, in the early hours of the morning to take photographs in the rain because she enjoys photography and needs to relax.
- She’s blunt, although she’s learn to hold back when dealing with witnesses – for instance in her conversation with Vera. And it is a learnt behaviour, she doesn’t have the instinctive ability to gauge other people that neurotypical people have.
These are recognisably autistic traits. Your response was the equivalent of ‘but you don’t look autistic’, an insulting comment the majority of autistic women hear at least once in their lives that is used to dismiss their experience of autism because it doesn’t fit with the stereotypes.
I have yet to hear back, either about this complaint or my dissertation drafts; I suspect my dissertation supervisor is ignoring me now. I added extra stuff, making it obvious when Lucie was stimming and her anxiety about dealing with work colleagues. I felt like I had to exaggerate to appease the ignorant.
I don’t like humans very much, at times.
Some of you are okay, I suppose.
In other news, I went to my first Adult Autism Forum Cafe on Tuesday evening (after going to craft club in the afternoon); the topic was supposed to be ‘confidence’ but I ended up on a table with two other women, we drew trees and talked about yarn. One of them got out her spinning so I got out my crochet. It was fun. I think I’m going to go to the sensory group on the 18th and the Forum on the 19th. Also, I have an appointment with a clinical psychologist and a support worker from the High Functioning Autism Service (I didn’t name it – I don’t like the functioning labels) on Tuesday morning to see what support they can offer. I need to write a list.
Right, it’s 5.15 a.m., and I should try to get back to sleep. The dogs are snoring at me.
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.
So today is symposium day. I’m nervous about the standing up and talking to people about my dissertation. I have notes for the ten minute talk but I’m not comfortable with it. I’m just going to look at the back of the room and talk to the wall, I think.
This week we looked at the work of Gertrude Stein, the U.S. born writer who spent most of her life in France and hung around with Picasso. Her work is weird, and not necessarily in a good way. It made not sense but sounded like it should. Much more amusing, and nonsensically sensible was the response by James Thurber to hearing the same piece of work.
We had a go at writing something in the style of Stein, but I don’t think I was very successful.
The chicken on the table, little feathery dinosaur on the table in the kitchen, wings aren’t flapping. The wings on the chicken on the table aren’t flapping. The chicken on the plate on the table, the blue and white plate, on the blue and white cloth on the table. The chicken on the blue and white plate on the blue and white cloth in the kitchen, the wings on the chicken on the blue and white plate on the blue and white cloth on the table in the kitchen aren’t flapping.
Flapping, flap, flap, chicken, fly away featherless chicken on the blue and white plate on the blue and white cloth on the table in the kitchen.
Last Wednesday was our last day before the Easter break, and to make up for some of the weeks lost because the tutor was ill, we had a extra session in the morning. The morning session cover basic grammar questions and pamphlet production, and flash fiction. The usual afternoon workshop covered ‘found’/re-purposed fiction. Can’t say I was too fussed by either workshop, but I had had an early start and a long wait between. I left at five in the afternoon, because it was a long enough day without staying and having to wait for the 20:02 train back to Grimsby.
That’s it, the term has finished. I should be relieved, it has been tiring and stressful at times, but I’m not. I’m anxious that I won’t see anything of the people I’ve met on the course now that it’s over. I’ve got half an assignment to finish writing and hand in on 26th, when I’ll see everyone again – we’re going for lunch. After that, who knows?
I’ll be back at uni in September to re-enrol, and then I have to wait until next January to start my final module before I do my dissertation. In the months between now and then I will be researching background information for my dissertation novel, and having a trial run at producing a booklet, which is the final assignment I’ll need to hand in, in a year from now before starting my dissertation.
Talking of assignments, I got 70% for my life-writing assignment. If I can get that or more for my ghost story, I’ll be very happy. I’m trying to get my assignment average results above 70%.
I’ve learnt some useful things this year. I’m better at prose than poetry, for a start. I have learnt to write reflexive essays, which were a complete mystery to me at the start. I have a vague understanding of how to write a script now. I got my highest mark in drama, although my 5000 word short story wasn’t far behind. Now it’s in third place after life-writing. I’ve had some useful feedback on my writing and I feel slightly more confident about it.
The next few months will be busy, as well as research for my dissertation, I will be finishing work on Hidden Fire, Fire Betrayed and Fire Awakened, and making progress on Fire Storm. I want to try to self-publish them. I made the decision based on a couple of things:
Probably not the best reasons but they are good enough for me. Right, there will be a book review, and three short stories later today, but first, it’s dinner time.
I haven’t done a uni update for a few weeks, have I?
Sorry about that. I changed my medication during reading week and I’m still adjusting. Since then I’ve had two days at university. In week six(?) we started talking about ghost stories; what makes a ghost story, why people read them, etc. and watched a bit of ‘Spirited Away’.
I had started my ghost story, I’d already written one but it wasn’t long enough so I’m saving it to enter in to a short story competition, probably the on-going monthly Writer’s Forum magazine competition. I’m waiting until I have some money though, because I want to pay the extra for a critique. Over the weekend, between weeks 6 and 7, I finished a second ghost story, which I hope to use as my assignment piece, because I don’t have much more in me in the way of ghost stories, not at the minute anyway.
In week 7 we talked about ghost stories we liked, and I borrowed a Dean Koontz book from my tutor. I read it in one sitting. It’s called Odd Apocalypse, and is part of a series. I don’t know if you’ve read it? I quite enjoyed it. I think I’ve tried to read it before and couldn’t get on with it but this time I could. Interesting characters and plot, and a different take on the ghost story/haunted house idea.
Other than giving each other feedback, I think we’ve pretty much finished ghost stories. Half the lesson last week was about what to do next, dissertations, getting published, that sort of thing. I told our tutor I had three complete novels and another five (at least) planned. He asked what I was doing with them. ME: Nothing, because I don’t know what to do next.
I have decided to try to enter more competitions. So far I’ve entered the ‘Writers and Artists Short Story Competition’ which was free – that was in February, and last night I entered the ‘Writer’s Forum Flash Comp 186’, which was also free because I’m a subscriber to the magazine, with a little sci-fi flash I wrote yesterday morning and left to bubble for 12 hours before I edited and sent it off. I’ve started another sci-fi short story that I’m going to enter in the ‘Writing Magazine’ competition later in the year. One of their monthly competitions had a sci-fi theme, so I’m going to try to enter that.
I’m going to enter ‘Hidden Fire’ in some ‘first chapters’ and first novel competitions, once I get my next student loan payment. The entry fees are about £15 – £30 so I’m going to have to be selective.
This week we are supposed to be sharing the first part of our ghost stories in class; since I already have mine written and it’s 3061 words I’ve shared it with my classmates already so I don’t have to read the whole thing out but can still get some feedback on it. I’m hoping to get some decent feedback, and to get more insight into what the hell I’m supposed to do next with my novels.
On Saturday I will be in Nottingham for the East Midlands Writer’s Conference. It will be a long day, as I have to catch the train at 7 a.m. and I won’t be home again until half seven in the evening, at the earliest (depending on whether I can get a lift from the station or not). I am looking forward to it, even if the thought of sitting in a room with a hundred-plus other people is uncomfortable. I have everything planned, down to which tram to get from the university to the train station in Nottingham on Saturday afternoon. The train tickets have been booked and delivered, I have my information pack printed out. I should be okay but I’m prepared. The new medication is definitely helping with the anxiety.
Also, awesome writer and course rep, Jo, has started her own book review blog. Go and see her work at https://feedmebooksblog.wordpress.com/. Also, she has a YA romance e-book out on amazon.co.uk, called ‘Hello World’, which she wrote a few years ago. It’s good, and she’s an even better writer now, so look out for more of her work.
In other news, my friend Michelle Conner released the paperback of her new novella ‘The Bound‘ yesterday and the e-book is released tomorrow.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 