For anyone who has read works by me before, you may have noticed a little pattern going on with the main characters. Most, if not all of them have Anxiety and Depression and all of them share the same birthday as mine (July 14th). I like to write mainly slice-of-life stories, in which a young teen is experiencing some form of event such as sitting exams or falling in love for the first time. But, they constantly doubt themselves and have times when they cry, alone, in their own bedroom and fear for their future.
I recently opened up to my therapist about shaping characters to be like me, but not me altogether. I don't just write from teen female POVs, I write from teen male POVs as well. Yet I still bring my experiences together to create a character profile. Let's take Morwenna from my novel Letters To Myself. She's seventeen, has Anxiety, is Bisexual but has a passion for writing. Her story helped to tell my story too. I'm twenty, a Bi writer with Anxiety. I was blown away by how easy the writing came from her naturally. It felt to me like I was living my own adventure, but also just off in the background and watching her grow up into an adult.
Mental health is really important for readers. I'm always looking for stories with someone I can instantly click with. I loved a novel called Starfish, about a teen girl with Anxiety and Social Anxiety. That in itself, is so difficult to put into words, as so many things could go wrong. Lots of other writers want to include someone who struggles with mental health, or is LGBT+, or disabled. I've learnt not to be afraid to ask other writers/readers for their advice. I want to create a story that is pure, true and honest.
There are others that I feel should be written more about in fiction. Such as suffering from Trich, which is common writing in non-fiction pieces but not in novels, SAD otherwise known as Seasonal Affective Disorder involving the un-balance of Vitamin D, iron and amounts of sunlight and also Autism itself. But mainly, I'm looking for a new adult novel about an autistic main character. I've yet to find one so far but I never want to give up searching.
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