Authors, Writers, Publishers, and Book Readers
I had to go crazy before I could call myself a writer.
I've been asked by a couple of people to talk about what I write, and, although I'm unsure if this is the right place to do so, I thought I'd give it a brief shot.
For the first time in my life I'm privileged to call myself a writer, since my first book is coming out next year, with the title Broken Whole: a California tale of Craziness, Creativity and Chaos (Click on the title in the last sentence if you'd like to read excerpts. I hope I'm allowed to keep a link in my post!)
Funnily enough, I've always written for a living, in the form of computer code. Hey, it is creative too ya know! But of course, it's the "wrong" side of the brain, and it would have been a little disingenuous of me to use that as a basis for my claim to be a writer. I have, however, written for my own pleasure for many years, and was indeed blogging online long before blogs existed.
I always wanted to write a book, but I felt that nothing had ever really happened to me, and literature didn't seem to be my bent (although I'm an avid consumer of the same.) The problem with nothing having ever happened to me was eviscerated in the summer of 2006, when I went through a supernova manic episode, culminating - after increasingly colorful and dangerous crises, in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
I actually began writing while I was still (unknowingly) manic, and saw the book, at the time, as the amazing story of a man who'd recovered completely from an adulthood of intermittent depression to become the person he'd always dreamed he'd be. I knew no fear, could talk to anybody (and talked to everybody), and ran around the tonier sections of the Westside of LA pulling people into my grand plans to, amongst other things, build a gay superclub from the ground up.
Along the way, I believed I was the most intelligent person who'd ever lived, and imagined that future generations might see me as a Messiah. I'm afraid that - fantastical as those two statements sound - I truly did believe those thing while I was in the crucible of mania. (And those aren't even the worst of it - remind me to tell you about my night in jail where I had two cops convinced I was the Anti-Christ.)
All speeding trains must stop sooner or later, and mine came to an end with a slow motion crash, when I abruptly discovered that, yes, bipolar means two poles. I'd foolishly believed that depression was vanquished, and I was completely unprepared for its return. Bit by bit I had to drop all of my entrepreneurial ventures, as I no longer had the emotional energy.
But I did persevere with the book, and found that I had a strong story I wanted to tell. In fact, I felt I could tie together my whole life, strand by strand, and feed it through the bipolar wormhole, and have it come out the other side making sense of my life. Most of the book recounts the violently colorful, luridly entertaining crises that marked the summer, but wrapped around it is ... detective work of the soul, I guess, peaking under the rocks to find what crawls beneath. Was I broken by the experience, or was I made more whole? And what did mania say about the question of identity: which was the real me? Was it the gleaming, magnetic personality I became while manic, or the more gray character that haunts my depressions? It really begs the question is there any such thing as the true self?
Well, I've written more than enough here already, so I'll bring this self-introduction to a close. My book comes out in 2010, from Chipmunka Publishing. Many thanks. Keith Adams
For the first time in my life I'm privileged to call myself a writer, since my first book is coming out next year, with the title Broken Whole: a California tale of Craziness, Creativity and Chaos (Click on the title in the last sentence if you'd like to read excerpts. I hope I'm allowed to keep a link in my post!)
Funnily enough, I've always written for a living, in the form of computer code. Hey, it is creative too ya know! But of course, it's the "wrong" side of the brain, and it would have been a little disingenuous of me to use that as a basis for my claim to be a writer. I have, however, written for my own pleasure for many years, and was indeed blogging online long before blogs existed.
I always wanted to write a book, but I felt that nothing had ever really happened to me, and literature didn't seem to be my bent (although I'm an avid consumer of the same.) The problem with nothing having ever happened to me was eviscerated in the summer of 2006, when I went through a supernova manic episode, culminating - after increasingly colorful and dangerous crises, in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
I actually began writing while I was still (unknowingly) manic, and saw the book, at the time, as the amazing story of a man who'd recovered completely from an adulthood of intermittent depression to become the person he'd always dreamed he'd be. I knew no fear, could talk to anybody (and talked to everybody), and ran around the tonier sections of the Westside of LA pulling people into my grand plans to, amongst other things, build a gay superclub from the ground up.
Along the way, I believed I was the most intelligent person who'd ever lived, and imagined that future generations might see me as a Messiah. I'm afraid that - fantastical as those two statements sound - I truly did believe those thing while I was in the crucible of mania. (And those aren't even the worst of it - remind me to tell you about my night in jail where I had two cops convinced I was the Anti-Christ.)
All speeding trains must stop sooner or later, and mine came to an end with a slow motion crash, when I abruptly discovered that, yes, bipolar means two poles. I'd foolishly believed that depression was vanquished, and I was completely unprepared for its return. Bit by bit I had to drop all of my entrepreneurial ventures, as I no longer had the emotional energy.
But I did persevere with the book, and found that I had a strong story I wanted to tell. In fact, I felt I could tie together my whole life, strand by strand, and feed it through the bipolar wormhole, and have it come out the other side making sense of my life. Most of the book recounts the violently colorful, luridly entertaining crises that marked the summer, but wrapped around it is ... detective work of the soul, I guess, peaking under the rocks to find what crawls beneath. Was I broken by the experience, or was I made more whole? And what did mania say about the question of identity: which was the real me? Was it the gleaming, magnetic personality I became while manic, or the more gray character that haunts my depressions? It really begs the question is there any such thing as the true self?
Well, I've written more than enough here already, so I'll bring this self-introduction to a close. My book comes out in 2010, from Chipmunka Publishing. Many thanks. Keith Adams
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Callie Leah on
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I think it's great that you're pursueing your dream of becoming a writer. There are a lot of people on thsi website that would love to have a book come out. I'm certainly one of them!! I can't wait to read your book! Congratulations!
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Permalink Reply by brokenwhole on
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Thank you Callie, I appreciate that! Take care, Keith
Callie Leah said:I think it's great that you're pursueing your dream of becoming a writer. There are a lot of people on thsi website that would love to have a book come out. I'm certainly one of them!! I can't wait to read your book! Congratulations!
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You too!
brokenwhole said:Thank you Callie, I appreciate that! Take care, Keith
Callie Leah said:I think it's great that you're pursueing your dream of becoming a writer. There are a lot of people on thsi website that would love to have a book come out. I'm certainly one of them!! I can't wait to read your book! Congratulations!
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Permalink Reply by Kay Elizabeth on
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Congratulations on the book, Keith! It sounds great! Your link isn't working and not because it's not allowed. It's just got a wee mistake in it. I'll put the correct one in my post until you get a chance to edit yours. That way no-one misses out on it. :)
http://www.brokenwhole.com/book.html
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Keith, will you tell us about the time you were in jail? I'd certainly like to know why.
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Callie, wow, that's a tough one. It was the culmination of the longest life of my night, and the whole story occupies over a third of the book. The night, and the few days following, were so experientially dense, with my mind racing a million miles an hour, that I could have devoted the entire book to just the four days from the day of my arrest to my release, four days later, from a locked psychiatric ER ward!) On my blog, I have a posting which tells the story more succinctly, and I'll cross-post it here later today, maybe as a blog posting to avoid putting such a large message on the discussion board!
Thanks so much for your interest, Callie! I looked at your profile to see if I could find some of your writing, but didn't see any links. Can you point them out to me please?
Regards, Keith
Callie Leah said:Keith, will you tell us about the time you were in jail? I'd certainly like to know why.
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Yes. If you'll look for the discusions, OMG! I just finished my first novel! or the discussion, feedback, you'll find one of my books, and one of the books I'm still working on. I should find out how to post them on my profile. I didn't even know you could do that. Thanks! I'll deffinitely check out your blog, I can't wait to read about jail time. I've always wondered what it would be like to be in jail.
brokenwhole said:Callie, wow, that's a tough one. It was the culmination of the longest life of my night, and the whole story occupies over a third of the book. The night, and the few days following, were so experientially dense, with my mind racing a million miles an hour, that I could have devoted the entire book to just the four days from the day of my arrest to my release, four days later, from a locked psychiatric ER ward!) On my blog, I have a posting which tells the story more succinctly, and I'll cross-post it here later today, maybe as a blog posting to avoid putting such a large message on the discussion board!
Thanks so much for your interest, Callie! I looked at your profile to see if I could find some of your writing, but didn't see any links. Can you point them out to me please?
Regards, Keith
Callie Leah said:Keith, will you tell us about the time you were in jail? I'd certainly like to know why.
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Callie, wow, congrats on finishing the book - I'll look for the post!
As for jail, I wouldn't recommend it :)
Keith
Callie Leah said:Yes. If you'll look for the discusions, OMG! I just finished my first novel! or the discussion, feedback, you'll find one of my books, and one of the books I'm still working on. I should find out how to post them on my profile. I didn't even know you could do that. Thanks! I'll deffinitely check out your blog, I can't wait to read about jail time. I've always wondered what it would be like to be in jail.
brokenwhole said:Callie, wow, that's a tough one. It was the culmination of the longest life of my night, and the whole story occupies over a third of the book. The night, and the few days following, were so experientially dense, with my mind racing a million miles an hour, that I could have devoted the entire book to just the four days from the day of my arrest to my release, four days later, from a locked psychiatric ER ward!) On my blog, I have a posting which tells the story more succinctly, and I'll cross-post it here later today, maybe as a blog posting to avoid putting such a large message on the discussion board!
Thanks so much for your interest, Callie! I looked at your profile to see if I could find some of your writing, but didn't see any links. Can you point them out to me please?
Regards, Keith
Callie Leah said:Keith, will you tell us about the time you were in jail? I'd certainly like to know why.
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Duely noted. ; )
brokenwhole said:Callie, wow, congrats on finishing the book - I'll look for the post!
As for jail, I wouldn't recommend it :)
Keith
Callie Leah said:Yes. If you'll look for the discusions, OMG! I just finished my first novel! or the discussion, feedback, you'll find one of my books, and one of the books I'm still working on. I should find out how to post them on my profile. I didn't even know you could do that. Thanks! I'll deffinitely check out your blog, I can't wait to read about jail time. I've always wondered what it would be like to be in jail.
brokenwhole said:Callie, wow, that's a tough one. It was the culmination of the longest life of my night, and the whole story occupies over a third of the book. The night, and the few days following, were so experientially dense, with my mind racing a million miles an hour, that I could have devoted the entire book to just the four days from the day of my arrest to my release, four days later, from a locked psychiatric ER ward!) On my blog, I have a posting which tells the story more succinctly, and I'll cross-post it here later today, maybe as a blog posting to avoid putting such a large message on the discussion board!
Thanks so much for your interest, Callie! I looked at your profile to see if I could find some of your writing, but didn't see any links. Can you point them out to me please?
Regards, Keith
Callie Leah said:Keith, will you tell us about the time you were in jail? I'd certainly like to know why.
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