 The room is in darkness save for the illumination of my laptop screen. The house is quiet with my family deep in slumber, the only sound the tip tap of my keyboard as I type these words. I am contemplating depression and writing and I have so much I want to say and yet don’t know where to begin. You see, Jim McLeod has asked me to provide an article for him around this very topic and all I can think is that I’m a fraud, but then again I’m not. Depression is meant to be this massive pit of despair you struggle with daily, a crippling state of being yet I fluctuate, sometimes optimistic with the broadest of smiles other times self-consumed with the troubles of the world and the bumps in the road of my life. There is no medication that I take, at least not prescribed, but then whoever prescribed a pint or three to ease the ache? So because of that I call charlatan on myself. Yet I struggle with the world. Immensely at times. My own world and the wider one. And so I write. Writing helps me to play out scenarios and explore us as humans. Or at least my perception at any rate. I’ve been told I write strong characters. By that I mean ones which feel real rather than the good person off to fight the good fight. The latter ones don’t interest me. They’re generally lacking in flaws, too perfect even though I know that isn’t the case in reality. I observe people. A lot. Not in a stalkerish fashion. Simply watching and listening in the everyday. You can learn a lot about the world that way. Then I write down what I see in a more exaggerated fashion, pushing our protagonists to see what it is that will push them over the edge. Now I’m playing that over in my head as I write this and am pondering what is common in that downward trajectory and it has hit me for the first time that none of them ask for help or accept help when it is offered. They are all forging ahead in this almost preordained fashion leading to inevitable disaster when perhaps there were safety nets there all along. Now I realise that life is far more complicated than that but perhaps there is a lesson to be had there. Maybe we sometimes don’t quite know how to ask for help; that British stiff upper lip and all, not wanting to trouble anyone really as you tell yourself your problems aren’t as great as everyone else’s (note: comparison is a bad thing, this isn’t a competition). So we put our calls for help and angst in our work as a form of release partly hoping someone might notice and partly to release the pressure in your head (write what you know, they say). There’s that old adage about blue curtains within a story and there being a deeper meaning or not in terms of depression and a sense of ennui or were the curtains just, in fact, blue. Sometimes things are not quite as subtle. I wrote a collection about mental disintegration with the title Broken on the Inside at a particularly vulnerable point! Talk about blatant! But the writing does help. And so do the people around you. I have an amazing wife and children who are the best thing in my life. Nothing beats long walks in the woods with them as we explore nature and escape the modern world for a bit. They are the three people I prioritise above the writing and everything else. Then there are my friends who help without even realising it. The people you can be you around rather than a persona presented to a non-descript audience. These include friends I have made through writing - including the bigger ginger Don who runs this site - who you can talk to about dismembering bodies without anyone rushing off to phone the police (shout out to my Crusty crew). So, where does that leave us? As I said at the start, I do feel a fraud writing this in part. At the moment I am in a good place mentally. That may change in the future. It may not. Let’s see. What I will add is that if you are a writer then use any angst, depression or stress on the page. Let it pour out of you. Don’t let the writing consume you or control you; it doesn’t matter if you don’t write every day, at times I haven’t written for weeks but don’t tell anyone. Use that strength of being you, and you are strong, to forge amazing stories. And go find your tribe, the place where you can simply be you and a place where you can put out your hand and ask for help when you might need it. Someone will more than likely say yes. phil sloman Phil Sloman is a writer of dark psychological fiction. His first story was published in 2014 and he has been writing ever since. In 2017 Phil was shortlisted for British Fantasy Award Best Newcomer for his novella Becoming David, and was part of Imposter Syndrome from Dark Minds Press which was nominated for British Fantasy Award Best Anthology in 2018. Phil regularly appears on several reviewers' Best of Year lists. https://www.philsloman.com/ Twitter: @phil_sloman Broken on the Inside Black Shuck Shadows presents a collectable series of micro-collections, intended as a sampler to introduce readers to the best in classic and modern horror.In Broken on the Inside, Sloman offers five stories of macabre mentality. "the five stories transcend the trappings of the genre to deliver a set of intelligent, heartfelt, and haunting incursions into the broken minds that so many of us suffer from" - GNoH "So what an introduction to Phil Sloman this was. It got me aching for more. This is well worth your investment." - Morgan K Tanner   Comments are closed.
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