Writing when Unwell

This past week was a rest week for me. If you follow me on twitter (@AmandKWrites), you may be aware that I have bipolar disorder. This can cause me all types of issues. One of those issues is I have agitated depression and dysphoric mania. What does that mean? It means that even when I'm depressed I'm still a little manic and even when I'm manic I'm still a little depressed.

You'd think this would cause an balancing effect, but that is not the case.

Both states cause my executive cognitive function to suffer.  Executive cognitive function is not intelligence, but rather things like memory, concentration, processing information, and being able to organize. When you look at a list of symptoms of bipolar disorder, there are hints at how it affects these functions, although it's only recently becoming more widely researched. Also, it affects everyone differently.

For depression symptoms, you see things like "restlessness" or "slowed behavior, and "difficulty making decisions."

For mania, you see symptoms like "distractability" and "poor decision making."

One that's often left off is forgetfulness. Working memory takes a big hit.

Anyway, this brings me to the fact that when I am struggling along my brain is doing all of these things at the same time. Instead of balancing out, it overwhelms. Racing thoughts make for poor writing thoughts. It's hard to write when you can't grasp your ideas fully. Also, even if I have so many ideas it's hard to write them down if I have no motivation thanks to the depression.

The writing advice out there is to write every day, but that is bad advice for some people. Even if you don't have bipolar, you may have other reasons that you can't write every day. Instead, I go by my own advice: If I feel like writing I will. If I feel like my head is about to explode, I'll just relax instead.

That was how this week went. I didn't write but I did other things for my writing. I participated in hashtag games about developing my story. I thought about my characters. I allowed the story to "download" into my brain. Once things even out, I'll be ready to go and writing again. If you need proof that my process works, I have started and completed a book. I didn't write every day, but I did finish what I started.

I hope this helps some people to know that taking care of yourself is important and there's no need to feel guilty if you can't write every day.