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    The Depression Handbook for Writers: A Simple and Practical Advice Guide
    The Depression Handbook for Writers: A Simple and Practical Advice Guide
    The Depression Handbook for Writers: A Simple and Practical Advice Guide
    Ebook86 pages59 minutes

    The Depression Handbook for Writers: A Simple and Practical Advice Guide

    By Giselle Renarde

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    About this ebook

    If you’re a writer living with depression, you might not know where to turn. There are days when depression devours your words and you find yourself incapable of working. People tell you you’re not alone. So why does it feel like you are?

    As an author with chronic depression, Giselle Renarde created this book as a means of reaching out to other writers with hope in hand. The Depression Handbook for Writers includes:
    •specific activities to help you through the dark days,
    •practical ideas to help you move forward with your writing business even when you find it impossible to write,
    •interviews with other authors experiencing depression,
    •all written in a personal, accessible, and heartfelt tone.

    The Depression Handbook for Writers was written for you, with love, care, and encouragement.
    Download your copy today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGiselle Renarde
    Release dateJan 12, 2016
    ISBN9781311291783
    Author

    Giselle Renarde

    Giselle Renarde is a queer Canadian, avid volunteer, and contributor to more than 100 short story anthologies, including Best Women's Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bondage Erotica, and Best Lesbian Romance. Ms Renarde has written dozens of juicy books, including Anonymous, Ondine, and Nanny State. Her book The Red Satin Collection won Best Transgender Romance in the 2012 Rainbow Awards. Giselle lives across from a park with two bilingual cats who sleep on her head.

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      Book preview

      The Depression Handbook for Writers - Giselle Renarde

      Introduction

      Why I Wrote This Book

      A few years ago, I was sitting in my grandmother’s living room with my sister, my mother and, of course, Grandma herself. That day, my grandmother told my sister and me a family secret that had been buried so deep we’d never heard so much as a whisper of it.

      The family secret involved domestic violence and mental illness. It involved my mother’s siblings being removed from their parents’ custody, divided up, and temporarily placed in orphanages, institutions, and a predecessor of the current foster care system.

      My mother had never told us she’d been in foster care as a child. If my grandmother hadn’t brought it up that day, I’m sure my sister and I would never have found out. As far as my mother was concerned, it was a memory she’d rather forget. As she put it, What happened in the past has no bearing on the present. Mom was not happy with Grandma for telling us.

      We’ve gone too long not talking about these things, my grandmother said. It’s been almost sixty years of pretending these things never happened.

      And then my grandmother brought me into the conversation, saying, Giselle had the right idea when she saw a therapist in university. She needed to talk to someone, so she did. That’s the healthy approach.

      My mother was livid. She shouted, Don’t you ever mention Giselle’s therapy again!

      I looked around the room. There were only the four of us, and we all knew I’d been severely depressed as a young adult. I asked my mother, Why don’t you want her talking about my therapy? It’s not a secret. It’s not something I’m ashamed of.

      My mother snapped, Well, you should be!

      The room went silent—that heavy sort of silence that sits on your chest, making it hard to breathe.

      Why should she be ashamed? my grandmother asked. She needed help and she got help. That’s admirable, if you ask me.

      No, it’s not, my mother said. When you go around saying you’re depressed, you’re in therapy, who’s everybody going to blame? The mother! Everyone will think it’s my fault.

      Who is everyone? my sister asked. There are only four of us in the room and we all know.

      My mother said, I don’t want to talk about this.

      And that pretty much shut down the conversation.

      Though I don’t think it’s a healthy attitude, I can understand my mother’s fearful defensiveness. If anything, it made me sad for her. Maybe she’ll never be able to stretch her emotional boundaries wide enough to discuss her past.

      But to shut me down so adamantly, and to insist that I muzzle my experience with depression? It was jarring, to say the least.

      That’s why I’ve decided to write a book about living with depression. Not to spite my mother, though I see how it might come across that way. She’s welcome to feel ashamed on my behalf, if she so chooses. Writing this book is important to me because I don’t want other people to feel ashamed of their depression. Being depressed is bad enough without being shamed for it!

      My depression peaked when I was in my late teens and early twenties, but it never went away. I still live with depression. Though I’m no longer seeking therapy to cope with day-to-day life, I find that talking to other people helps tremendously.

      I’m sure I’m not the only person in the world who’s been chastised by a loved one for admitting I’m depressed. Fortunately, I have a partner who understands depression intimately, because she’s experienced those lows too. I can’t overstate how much it helps to have someone in my life who gets it because she’s been there.

      That’s what makes this book so important to me. I’m not a psychologist (I failed out of the psychology program at the University of Toronto—too depressed for success!), but I am a writer, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from spending time around other writers, it’s that a lot of us are depressed.

      We battle depression. We live with depression. We cope with depression. We all have our own takes on how it interacts with our lives, and how we interact with it, but with fifteen years of depression under my belt, I’ve learned that sharing and communication makes a huge difference.

      But I knew I couldn’t do this on my own. I needed feedback from other writers—writers who are now or who have in the past been depressed. I can’t thank those authors enough for their time and opinions, which appear in the interviews section of this book.

      Before I get down to it, I’m just going to point out that I’m not a medical professional. I’m writing this book as a writer, not

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