World Suicide Prevention Day

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day.

Before I started writing my novella Cat and The Dreamer, there were a lot of news stories about teenagers committing suicide. There were several incidents of them linking up with friends or people they'd met online for that purpose. As a consequence, when I think about suicide prevention, I usually think about young people.

According to the Samaritans, there were approximately 12 deaths per 100,000 of the UK population in 2013 in the 15-24 age group. Just this week, in the UK, a girl committed suicide over something seemingly so trivial, but which was obviously the tipping point. It's so sad that she wasn't able to talk to anyone, that she thought she had no way out. She was 15.

There are many issues that drive someone to kill themselves, of course; but when I read about a child taking their own lives, I just wish they'd had someone to sit down with them, hug them and tell them it gets better.

The kids who are bullying you will be out of your life in a couple of years. The things that make you 'different' and 'weird' now, will be unique at university - people will envy you for your confidence. The home life that feels almost impossible, you can escape it - there are people to help you, to make you feel safe again. You won't always feel awkward, scared, alone. There are people waiting to be your best friend or your spouse, people who will love you because you are amazing. In short, it gets better.

Above all, if nothing else, please talk to someone.

UK Organisations:
Childline
PAPYRUS
If U Care Share Foundation
Young Minds

US Organisations:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Yellow Ribbon
Teen Help
The Kelty Patrick Dennehy Foundation

The ups and downs of writing

By steenslag (P1010533) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

It's been a horrible week. It started on Monday when I got annoyed with the internet, my blog, myself and everything. By Tuesday, I really didn't want to pick up my laptop at all, and instead I went to the gym and did a lot of cleaning. On Wednesday Hubby'd had enough and took me shopping for shoes (very pretty shoes, I posted a pic on Facebook, if you're friends with me over there), but I was still feeling low on Wednesday evening.

However, on Thursday, I woke up with several scenes for my current/partially abandoned WIP running around my head. Yay! Annoyingly, I had to go to work in the morning, but I came home and went straight to my notebook (Reader, I didn't even switch on my laptop to check my emails!) I wrote almost six pages in teeny, tiny handwriting.

You see, I've known for a very long time that I write best when I'm feeling a little bit down, not fully depressed but not singing and dancing in the rain either. Further still, I can't wake up in the morning, feel slightly sad and immediately write a fantastic chapter... No, I have to feel like it for a few days or weeks.

I've done some very basic research on the connection between writers (artists in general?) and depression, and the current theories swerve in the opposite direction - you are happy while the writing is going well, and fall into a fug of depression when it slows down or goes wrong.

It happens when:

• you start comparing yourself to Stephen King, JK Rowling, Ali Smith, Margaret Atwood, EL James... whoever you consider to be at the pinnacle of your genre
• you start to feel lonely and hopeless
• you receive yet another rejection.

I couldn't find - granted, this was very simple first-two-pages-of-Google research - any article which made the case for writers needing to be depressed to write. I'm sure I can't be the only one - although I like to think I'm pretty unique, in a world of 7 billion it's highly unlikely.

Without prying too much, I'd love to hear your opinions.