{"id":1429,"date":"2017-07-11T10:12:04","date_gmt":"2017-07-11T15:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=1429"},"modified":"2017-07-11T11:29:50","modified_gmt":"2017-07-11T15:29:50","slug":"1022-days-or-but-i-need-to-suffer-for-my-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2017\/07\/1022-days-or-but-i-need-to-suffer-for-my-art\/","title":{"rendered":"1,022 Days (or &#8220;But I Need to Suffer for My Art!&#8221;)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I don&#8217;t wanna belabor the point, but this tweet got me thinking:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Sometimes it can be a long ride from the start of a story until the day it gets published. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/E6hDH8j1ii\">https:\/\/t.co\/E6hDH8j1ii<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 F&amp;SF (@fandsf) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/fandsf\/status\/881581715235287040\">July 2, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\"><p>\n~350 words longhanded on a new SF story: THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN, HE FLIPPED A CROOKED HOUSE <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/writing?src=hash\">#writing<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Detroit?src=hash\">#Detroit<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 David Erik Nelson (@SquiDaveo) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SquiDaveo\/status\/511118419358666752\">September 14, 2014<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Part of the reason this story took so long to go from this first longhand page to hitting newsstands was because, over the course of the winter that followed that tweet, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2016\/10\/its-worldmentalhealthday-so-i-want-to-share-something-my-doctor-told-me-15-months-ago\/\">I was steadily loosing my mind<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Since my adolescence I&#8217;ve always had seasonal affect issues, my mood steadily sinking until February\u2014I&#8217;m from Michigan; Bob Hicok famously characterizes us as &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2008\/05\/19\/a-primer\">a people who by February \/ want to kill the sky for being so gray<\/a>&#8220;\u2014then rebounding with the thaw.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Lots of people are like that, especially here; no big.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>But that year the mood never rebounded; it just sank and sank and sank.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I ate more sugar and drank more coffee and skateboarded as much as I could, and soldiered on.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>But by summer the hole was too deep.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Once I&#8217;d slam a coffee and another coffee, eat some cookies, skate hard, and be OK.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>But by July I&#8217;d skate so hard I was seeing stars and woozy, and 20 minutes later feel like crap and be desperate to go back to the skatepark.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>My speech was getting slow and ponderous, my behavior erratic.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I got in a fight with my wife over something\u2014I can&#8217;t even recall what, something our son had done\u2014and lost my temper.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I don&#8217;t remember what I said, just that I was in the backyard screaming, my chest collapsing, so angry I was dry-heaving and chanting &#8220;I&#8217;m sick; I&#8217;m sick; I&#8217;m sick.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I didn&#8217;t want to be alive any more, but I couldn&#8217;t stand the idea of being separate from my children, and the thing running constantly in my head was how I could get careless enough to be killed in an accident where my life insurance would still pay off.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Then my family would be on easy street and not burdened by me; my kids would be able to afford college, my wife would own our house outright, and I wouldn&#8217;t have to be me anymore, because I wouldn&#8217;t have to be at all.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>And being, it had become apparent, was my core problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b><i>PRO-TIP<\/i><\/b><i>: If you need to quickly diagnose depression that has become dangerous, just ask them:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>&#8220;If you could push a button and have never existed at all, would you do it?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>No pain, no trauma, no one mourning you, just *poof!* and you never were.&#8221;<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>If the answer is &#8220;Yeah, sure,&#8221; then that person needs to talk to a doctor very, very soon.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">At any rate, by the time I had that screaming fit I had already made an appointment to talk to a doctor\u2014something that I&#8217;d kept a secret for reasons I can&#8217;t really explain any more, because they make no fucking sense; I&#8217;d made that appointment under false pretenses, telling my doctor I&#8217;d re-injured my ankle\u2014the whole point is that nothing I was doing then made a lot of sense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But part of that logic had to do with this poisonous, murderous goddamn myth we have that taking meds for your psychiatric illnesses is somehow &#8220;weak&#8221; or &#8220;unnatural&#8221; or damages the purity of your artistic fucking whatever.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I wrote 50,000 words of stories while my brain was collapsing that just aren&#8217;t much of anything.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I sat on revisions of my novella &#8220;Where There is Nothing, There is God&#8221; (which was in <i>Asimov&#8217;s<\/i> in 2016, and was a finalist for the Asimov&#8217;s Award) for a goddamn *year.*<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I&#8217;d sent it around, got feedback from Ann VanderMeer at Tor and C.C. Finlay at F&amp;SF\u2014really good advice, advice that ultimately made it the strong story it was\u2014and then did nothing for a full calendar year.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I wrote &#8220;There Was a Crooked Man&#8230;&#8221;, put it through my writing group, got great feedback, and then just sat on it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And I have no idea why.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Or, more to the point, I know precisely why: Because my brain had drifted from doing a fairly crappy job of managing serotonin to not really bothering to manage it at all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I started taking 50mg of Sertraline every morning about two years ago (with the ongoing support of a psychiatrist).<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>It&#8217;s cheap, I haven&#8217;t suffered major side effects, it&#8217;s been really good for my personal relationships, and has spared my wife and children having to plan and attend my funeral\u2014and it&#8217;s done fuckall to harm my &#8220;art&#8221;:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">This story, &#8220;There Was a Crooked Man&#8230;&#8221;, saw the better part of its <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1430 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/DCJWfFTW0AAr9iF-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"Magazine of Fantasy &amp; Science Fiction, July\/Aug 2017\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/DCJWfFTW0AAr9iF-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/DCJWfFTW0AAr9iF-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/DCJWfFTW0AAr9iF.jpg 827w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 85vw, 225px\" \/>revision after I went on meds.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>The last three pieces I&#8217;ve sold\u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/arborteassummerreadingseries.com\/expiration-date\/\"><i>Expiration Date<\/i><\/a>, &#8220;Whatever Comes After Calcutta&#8221; (forthcoming in <i>F&amp;SF<\/i>) and &#8220;In the Sharing Place&#8221; (sold to <i>Asimov&#8217;s<\/i>)\u2014were entirely written on anti-depressants.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>These latest pieces are among the best work I&#8217;ve done, precisely because (<b><i>*SPOILER ALERT!*<\/i><\/b>) it&#8217;s a lot easier to do good work when you aren&#8217;t struggling to keep being alive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If you need help, please get help.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Needing psych meds is no more a moral failing than needing a cast when you break your leg, and seeing a therapist isn&#8217;t touchy-feely &#8220;snowflake&#8221; BS any more than seeing a physical therapist after you wreck your car is touchy-feely bullshit.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Your brain got injured, you need some medicine and therapy to get it back on track; that&#8217;s fine.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Go do that thing.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Don&#8217;t waste ~300 days that you could spend Getting Things Done or hanging out with your kids or having a beer or reading or playing video games.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Go get well; if that&#8217;s not possible (because, the fact is, it often isn&#8217;t), at least get <i>better<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t wanna belabor the point, but this tweet got me thinking: Sometimes it can be a long ride from the start of a story until the day it gets published. https:\/\/t.co\/E6hDH8j1ii \u2014 F&amp;SF (@fandsf) July 2, 2017 ~350 words longhanded on a new SF story: THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN, HE FLIPPED A CROOKED &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2017\/07\/1022-days-or-but-i-need-to-suffer-for-my-art\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;1,022 Days (or &#8220;But I Need to Suffer for My Art!&#8221;)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11],"tags":[52,26,33,115,114,77,46,74,35,36,25],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1429"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1437,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions\/1437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}