- AtoZ Challenge 2024
- Gettting ready to AtoZ
- A is for Actually/Abundance
- B is for boo…. Brilliant things
- B is for Bad Idea Bears
- C is for Challenging
- D is for Dark #AtoZ2024
- E is for environment #AtoZ2024
- E is for Editing
- F is for Finders Keepers
- F is for Family and Friends
- G for Groups – AtoZ 2024 #MondayBlogs
- G is for ‘Only the Gods are Real’
- H is for Home
- I is for ‘I am, I feel…’
- J is for Jump (a poem)
- K is for Killing #AtoZ
- L is for Ludosport (what else?) #AtoZ
- M is for (e)motionless
- M is for Mourning
- M is for Meditation #MondayBlogs
- M is for Magic
- N is for normal
- N is for November
- O is for Outer Space
- P for Psychosis #Mondayblogs
- Q for quotables
- R for reality
- S is for singing and other music
- T is for Time and Travel
- U is for Understanding
- V is for Via
- W is for Wishes
- X is for Xray and other medical stuff
- Y is for Yesterday
- Z is for Zebras and ZZZZs
- And…that’s it – An AtoZ Rounup
I started out writing as a fanfiction writer. For the longest time, though I had original characters, I would stick them in my favorite places and write with characters I knew about, to understand them more. I think a lot of writers start that way. But I also write fiction to understand people.
Weird? Maybe.
My life hasn’t been exactly ‘standard’. I have done things that people don’t think about doing – I’ve been a community manager for a gaming compay, I was an Army cadet, and not because I wanted to socialise with the hot lads in uniform (that’s a rather infamous quote about why someone joined our group when I was a cadet. Her ‘hot boyfriend’ was there, so she was too. It worked for them, they’re married now). I wanted to learn about the army – I had in fact considered applying to Wellbeck – a sixth form school for Army Cadets that feed into the Army univeristy (or did). In the end, I didn’t go, but that’s the jumping off point for a story I’m currently writing.
But I use my writing to understand situations too. As I’m on the spectrum (which isn’t a surprise) so I use my writing to explore what I’d do. It’s often more extreme than the thing I’m driven to understand – but often the stories I write are built around ideas and things I just don’t understand.
I use my fiction to understand myself too – it’s a type of therapy after all. Again, not just about situations, but exploring the worst things I hear (see P for Psychosis), and understanding and dismantling why the things she says scare me, so I can rationally say ‘this wouldn’t be as I fear’. At least that’s what I try to do in theory. In practice, it’s taken a lot of time to teach myself that no, there are certian things she’s right about, but a lot more she’s not.
So. In the AtoZ of inspirations, Understanding is one of those things that applies broad spectrum.
There’s one other element though.
I use my non-fiction to help OTHERS understand. It’s why I’m writing ‘we need to talk about Psychosis’, and write books about marketing and editing and other things important to writers. Why I wrote the semi-autobiographical ‘run girl run’ and ‘Light dancing’. Why I’m now writing Acts of Change. If I can help one person understand the things that go on a little bit better, then I’ve done my job – helping others is what I think I enjoy the most, and sometimes I think, what I’m made for.
Kai is a writer, author and avid reader. A mental health advocate, Ludosport athlete and coder. She’s the mother of two young adults, owned by two cats, and lives with her beloved in the Cotswolds.
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