Today marks the start of the Mental Health Foundation’s Mental Health Awareness Week. As you know, this is kind of a thing for me*. This year’s theme is Nature. The positive benefits of connecting with nature are well documented and this past year has been brought home to me, what with the amount of last year I spent on furlough, gardening, becoming more aware of my surroundings and so forth. I can, for example, now recognise a wren straight off the bat, and have a passing idea of what a blackbird sounds like.
Mental Health plays a significant part in my forthcoming book, Playtime’s Over (out soon from Propolis). Perhaps unsurprising (write what you know…), but with an increased public awareness of, and sensitivity to, MH issues, it feels like an important thing to discuss. Which is why I spend a fair amount of time on here talking about it, as well as using it as a basis for my fiction.
Personally, I’ve had a pretty good year. Book deal, great new job taking the potential sting out of redundancy, a subsequent better work/life balance – things are going pretty well. I’ve been lucky. And I have seen that played out in my dealings with the broken bits of my mind. I’ve certainly suffered less anxiety attacks in the last twelve months**. There has been some underlying depression at times, I think, although some of that is almost certainly bound up in the pronounced Vitamin D deficiency I was diagnosed with earlier in the year***. But as the time for the afore-mentioned book to appear draws closer, I can hear the black dog barking in the far-off distance.
I now have a date, which no doubt I’ll start yelling about before too long. It is, I can say, a little earlier than I possibly expected (it’s ballpark with regards to my expectations, just closer to this end of the window, shall we say). And while this is obviously VERY GOOD AND EXCITING NEWS, there are a few questions that were hovering at the back of my mind that have just leapt a few font sizes.
What if nobody likes it? What if nobody buys it? What if some hitherto-unconsidered lapse in my thought processes emerges in the text that makes me look foolish? What if all those racist and sexist tweets in my past come back to haunt me****? What if I upset someone I know, like a vicar? What if my mum reads it?
What if nobody cares?
Obviously, I am aware that most of this is nonsense. I know how my mind works, I’m well aware of its stratagems for self-sabotage. And surprisingly, given my self-esteem issues, I remain confident that the book’s bloody good. So if you don’t like it, that’s on you. In all seriousness, I am fully conscious of how fortunate I am to be in the position I am. It is not in any way my intention to bemoan all the problems that come with having a book deal and becoming a published author. Even if it tanks and I never get published again, the achievement in getting this far will always be a victory. It’s just a reminder to me that this sort of thing doesn’t make that sort of thing go away.
I was incredibly flattered recently to be invited to give a quote for an upcoming novel by Richard Gadz. His publisher was looking for authors to give it a read and when someone suggested me, amazingly my lack of experience didn’t stop her sending it over. The book, The Workshop of Filthy Creation, out from Deixis Press 31st October, I will say is bloody good. An updating/continuation/reinterpretation of the Frankenstein story, it juggles some hefty ideas around what constitutes ‘life’ with some meaty, visceral body horror. It’s well crafted, I really enjoyed it and look forward to picking up a print copy.
What really hit home though was the next newsletter from Deixis, talking about not only my endorsement but also publisher Angel Belsey’s emotions when she received it. It’s a fearlessly honest statement referencing Imposter Syndrome and Fear of Failure. For me to have given a lift to someone I assume is way more grounded in all this than I am was revelatory. I couldn’t have had a more timely reminder that WE ALL FEEL LIKE THIS SOMETIMES. Nobody out there has it all sewn up, everybody needs a lift from time to time and, crucially, even during those times that you feel you need it, you never know when you might be actually doing it for someone else. That’s magic.
So over the course of this week, get outside, find a way to reconnect with nature, breathe, relax, take a moment for yourself. But remember as well, if you’re finding it tough at the moment, that person you’re looking up to, who looks like they’re cruising, underneath the surface, they could well be every bit as lost as you are. Let’s all pick each other up.
* History of clinical depression, anxiety attacks, yada yada yada
** I won’t pretend there hasn’t been any. As I write, it’s been five days since my last one. But hey, before that…
*** All fine now, taken my pills, got outside more, summer’s coming
**** This is a joke. I have deleted them all.
James Kinsley 