Ask the Author: Clyde Dee
Answered Questions (4)
Clyde Dee
Thank you so much for your comment Lenore. It is really great to be contacted and it helps someone like me feel more visible. I am grateful for your interest in my subjects and hope you read and like my book.
Clyde Dee
I lead a very structured life and write regularly each weekend for approximately fifteen hours. I have learned not to be a perfectionist initially, but to draft and draft. At this point I am exploring the marketing process for the first time and this may cut into my writing time a bit. My first draft of Fighting for Freedom in America was about six hundred pages, twice as long as it is now. It took me a year or so to draft that and a total of seven years to complete; though I did take a year off to develop my Special Messages book. So I haven't experienced writer's block per say, but I have had to sort through a lot of slop.
Clyde Dee
I am working on a book on a theoretical approach towards working with people in "psychosis" which encourages them to tell their story and be more mindful and communicative about their experiences. The work is inspired by the groups I run for the past eight years called Special Messages. I have developed what I argue is a universal process of things that message receivers can relate to that can be used to start up group conversations. In addition I present a system of coping skills that reinforce things that can be done to help a message receiver succeed in things they are motivated to succeed in. Central to this work is the concept that we who have experienced "psychosis" need to be viewed more like an oppressed culture, that we need to be taught to work with each other and that the key to doing this is to offer a space where we can be encouraged to express silenced experiences and realize that we are not as alone as we think we are when we are in crisis. I have just finished initiating an eighteen month grant program that experimented using these ideas to train peer counselors and we started up groups in many agencies across our city to promote more of a cultural view of "psychosis" across diagnostic categories. It was successful and I now am going back to drafts of my book and integrating things I have learned and changes I have made to the workbook curriculum.
Clyde Dee
At some of my lowest points, when I couldn't believe what was happening to me was real, I remembered Victor Frankel points in Man's Search for Meaning and told myself that one day I would be able to write about what was happening to me. So I was just fulfilling a promise to myself. As soon as I was able to clear up the time in my schedule, I did it. A lot of things got cut, but I did write about them.
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