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Showing posts with the label Kay Redfield Jamison

Falling through the floor – writing about mental illness and recovery. By Rosalie Warren

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This is a bit of an experiment. I’ve written and published before now about my mental health, including a post on Authors Electric a few months ago about anxiety and panic attacks. I’ve mentioned my recurrent depression and I may even have summarised the effects it has on me – but I’ve never published anything I actually wrote (or tried to write) while depressed. There are good reasons for that – one of which being that it can be bloomin’ difficult, if not impossible, to write anything at all when depressed. It’s certainly not something I’d advise anyone in that condition to try – not unless they really want to, and feel that it might help. The last thing someone with depression needs is another thing that he or she ‘should’ do. Depression is enough of a burden and a severe taskmaster without adding to its demands. But this time, recently, I wanted to write. Perhaps I wasn’t as bad as I’ve sometimes been. Certainly I seem to be coming out of it, thanks partly to my trusty...

Anyone like to be the new Bob Dylan? by Ros Warren

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 Just listened to a programme about Bob Dylan and realised yet again that if I could choose another life on earth, I would want to be a musican/composer/performer/songwriter or some combination of all of these.  Now please, if you know me, don't laugh. Or try not to, anyway. I'm  not sure whether these unconsummated longings were at the back of my mind when I wrote Alexa's Song. I suppose they must have been, because Alexa, the heroine of the book, is all of these things. Not that they seem to bring her much happiness, confused creature that she is - her composing career stymied by a bad experience at music college years ago and her personal life rather a mess, too. Having abandoned her lover Jake to marry his brother Steve, Alexa now seems not to want either of them and she's off to America to follow a dream of starring in a TV show where the contestants compete to write songs. And while there, she meets an ageing rock star and they have a fling. Just to complica...