Jessica MacIntyre's Blog, page 5

One Of My Worst Decisions

Hello blog readers. I find myself once again apologizing for the radio silence on here. I’ve been spending all my nights working on the third installment of my vampire series and it was taking up all the space in my head. I’ve neglected the blog which is a shame, because I really do enjoy blogging.

With that out of the way I thought I’d talk today about one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made, why I made it, and why I’ll never do anything so stupid again. The decision I regret may shock you. I know it will certainly ruffle the feathers of any teachers who read this, but that’s par for the course.

So, what was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made? Going back to school. That’s right! You heard me! One of the worst decisions I’ve ever made was going back to school to take a Legal Administration course. Back in 2007 I was working full time in a gas station and beating myself up for being in my thirties and having such a ‘menial job’.  If you follow the blog at all you know that during my high school years I was coping with a pretty nasty mental illness and as such ended up dropping out of school.

Truth be told I was never a great student, largely due to the fact that I had a piss poor excuse for a human being of a ‘teacher’ back in grade 3 (or 3rd grade as you Americans like to call it).  I was berated, humiliated, and told I was stupid, pretty much on a daily basis by this woman. I had nightmares and would hear her voice as I was trying to fall asleep at night telling me how much I disgusted her (yes, she actually said that). I gave up on school that year and started just living in my imagination. I was eight. I had to escape somehow.

My ability to pay attention seemed to dwindle after that. I lost interest in trying. I had a few successes here and there but mostly school was a place I loathed, mainly because it seemed like it was just an opportunity for adults to pass judgement and let me know what a useless piece of garbage I was.

Many times I remember being told, as we were all being told, ‘you’re nothing without an education.’   While I certainly do see the value in an education I think this is a bit harsh. You’re nothing? Whoa! Back up the train. I’m still a human being. I still have value and worth, high school diploma or not. Although this is not the way I was made to feel. I understand the sentiment behind this bit of ‘tough love’ that was being heaped upon me, but it only served to question my worth as a person.

I bought into this argument, hook line and sinker, and went back to school in 2007 thinking this would be the answer to my problems. I’d get a better job, make more money and finally be ‘something’.  Don’t get me wrong. I know lots of people who took the same program at the same school I went to and it seems to have worked out beautifully for them. They do indeed have good jobs and seem to love their lives. Kudos to those people. Unfortunately, I’m not among them.

School itself wasn’t a bad experience. The other students were great and most of the instructors were great people. I succeeded in school for the first time in my life and it felt good. I graduated with a 93% average and only a 4% absentee rate. Not too shabby for someone who was told they were a disgusting waste of space as an eight year old is it?

I found a job at a law firm right out of school and worked there for six months. The most miserable six months of my working life. Have you ever seen the movie, “Mean Girls”?  Well the women in this office would put the characters in mean girls to shame! These ladies were close to retirement however, so it was more like, “Old Mean Girls.” That’s the movie Lindsay Lohan will star in when she’s sixty.  I was good at the actual job, but found it tedious. I could blame the fact that I have no interest in working at a law firm again on the people I worked with, but truth be told, even if I had been working with a bunch of saints I don’t think a job like that is for me. 

So to sum up, one of the worst decisions I ever made was believing that I was stupid and falling for the argument that I had to have a certain type of job/education to have any value as a human being. Then going back to school, getting that education and paying through the nose for it, only to realize that it wasn’t for me.

What I should have been doing, instead of worrying about how I looked being in my thirties and working at a gas station, would have been to keep working there (I really did like that job!) and focus on writing and creating.

Recently I’ve been having a lot of discussions with other writers about the subject of money. Some are really pissed off that they’re not making money at it. But you know what? Writers not making money is nothing new. It’s been going on for centuries. Inevitably when you tell people you’re a writer they say things to you like, “I hope you get rich”.  Someone asked me recently if I was making any money doing it. When I said, “no not really,” they came back with, “Well what’s the good of it then?”

What’s the good of it? Are you kidding me?  Look folks, in life we all get two paychecks. One financial, and one psychological. If you are going to go into the arts at all you have to decide how you want to live. Does having a big home, a nice car and vacations down south every year really mean a lot to you? If so, don’t expect to get that from your art. Most artists never live off their art. If you love it enough you’ll want to devote a large portion of yourself to it, and for a lot of us that means taking a job that is not very demanding so that we can have the time to really focus on it because creating something is the payoff. The psychological paycheck.

Is money necessary? Of course it is. You need to eat. You need to pay bills and care for those around you if you have a family. But how much of it do you really need?  Stephen Pressfield says in his book, “The War of Art” that, “A true artist focuses on the work and allows the rewards to come or not come. Whatever they like.”  In other words a true artist doesn’t write, paint, or play music to get rich. If they get rich then boo ya! If not they’ll still be writing, painting and playing in the poor house, that’s just the way they are. It’s who they are.

We all need to make the decisions that serve us. Not everyone is well served by an impressive job. When I was working at the firm I would come home from work every night and go straight to bed. We’re talking out by six o’clock because I was so exhausted and unhappy. Finally my husband said to me, “You need to get out of there. You’re a miserable person and I can see it.”  I was in denial for a long time. I had this ‘great’ job and should be happy right? This was a job that would enable me to have respect for myself right? Wrong!

I’ll never set foot in another office again, even though I have the education to do it. I’d prefer McDonalds or dishwashing or street sweeping. I’ll do whatever you want but please oh please don’t make me work in that miserable environment again.

So what’s one of the worst decisions you’ve ever made? Comment below.

Mental Illness and The Police

So last week a woman who was apparently suffering from a mental illness was shot down in Washington DC after a high speed car chase. This story has been painful to watch and I have to admit, I stopped paying attention to it after reading several conflicting articles on what exactly happened. I don’t know and I obviously wasn’t there. I can only hope that the right call was made and that it was the ONLY call that could have been made. Some will argue that she was unarmed, but a car can most definitely be a weapon, just ask anybody who’s lost a loved one to a drunk driver.

It’s not for me to judge the police. I’m sure an inquiry will be made and hopefully the situation will be carefully looked at and the appropriate actions taken, whatever the outcome is determined to be. Some of these things may have already happened and if they have, you’re sitting here reading this thinking I should get off my ass and Google it before posting. That’s not gonna happen. This whole story is much too aggravating for me anymore, and I’ll tell you why.

We throw the word hero around much too liberally. Some people are so militant about how police officers are ‘heroes’ that they turn off any kind of objectivity in looking at the situation from the perspective that the police may have been too heavy handed.  Now, this was obviously a life or death situation and as I said, I wasn’t there. They totally could have made the right and appropriate call. As someone with a mental illness I would hate to wake up from a psychotic episode and discover that I’d plowed my car into a bunch of innocent people and perhaps hurt or killed them. I’ve never been a danger to anyone but myself but I would hope and pray that if that day ever came that there would be a police officer there with enough balls to pull the trigger and put me down, because the guilt of living with hurting another human being would kill me anyway. I would never live with it.

But here’s the thing. I’ve had a few dealings with police officers when I’ve tried to both obtain help for myself in moments of crisis, and with others who I’m close to. Some were kind and compassionate and saw a very sick person in need of help. Others were cynical and closed minded who did everything from mocking to eye rolling. I would not call those people ‘heroes’, I would call them douchebags! I only hope that the type of police officer handling the situation in Washington was the former and not the latter. But I’ll say it again. I wasn’t there.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that although I have all the respect in the world for the police, I really feel more needs to be done in terms of sensitivity training in their approach to people with mental health issues. It doesn’t make you a hero to simply put on your badge and go to work. It makes you a hero when you see someone who is sick and suffering and you treat them with as much compassion and understanding as the situation will allow. Trust me, not all of them do.

There have been times when the police have saved my bacon so I hope this is not coming off as a slight against them. I’ll always be grateful for the positive things they’ve done for my family, not the least of which is finding my little boy when he went missing a few years back. They were stellar and could not have done more to find him. Luckily we had him back within about 90 minutes (the looongest 90 minutes of my life!) thanks to the K9 Unit. Every time I see the K9 Unit I get a little teary because I know what a huge difference they make.

I saw a comment by the wife of a police officer on a message board this week saying that she was sick of her husband having to deal with the ‘crazies’.  I hope those are her words and not his because nobody likes to be treated like garbage due to a stupid label, but unfortunately this sometimes happens. My hope is that all police officers will see a mentally ill person as a person. Somebody’s loved one who means just as much to them as their own loved ones do, as opposed to ‘a crazy’, and treat them as such.

Brotherhood of Man

Hey everyone!

As I sit here right now I can’t help but feeling a little proud of myself. Last night I finished a novel that I’ve been working on for a while. Initially I began work on it last spring, but after about six weeks I stopped because the material was becoming difficult to deal with. It’s not often that a character comes into your brain fully formed, but Charlie Gower did just that.  Here’s what happened.

I can’t remember how long ago it was now, maybe a year or two, there was a story about how our local children’s hospital was making severe cuts to mental health services. A number of beds were to be closed as they ‘no longer had the need’ for them. The waiting list at the hospital had been cut from over a thousand kids to just under one hundred. A spokesperson for the hospital was interviewed by the local news and said that services were not going to be affected, even though the cuts were going to be pretty large scale.

As she was talking, my husband and I looked at each other and at the same moment said, ‘She doesn’t believe what she’s saying.’ It was one of those times when you see a spokesperson simply towing the line, reciting what they’ve been told to recite. It was mechanical and totally without feeling. She knew she was standing up there lying and moreover, she knew that everyone watching was going to know it too.

The story disappeared from the headlines for a week or so, but reappeared later when someone did some digging and found out that the reason the wait list had gone from over one thousand to under one hundred is because someone had simply gone in and deleted names. Letters were sent to parents asking if their child still needed mental health assistance. If they didn’t answer they were bumped off the list without as much as a notification. Some would argue that it was the parent’s job to respond, but lo and behold, the very next week there were parents in the media saying, “What letter? We didn’t get a letter.” If it was one or two who said that you could say they were slack or the letter got lost in the mail, but almost a thousand letters?

Now, far be it from me to criticize the IWK. They’ve done great things and are largely a great children’s hospital. They’ve always been there at our time of need when my kids were sick and I know people who have spent lots of time there with very sick children and would gladly sing their praises. But let’s face it, it doesn’t take a genius to see what was going on here. It’s the same thing that goes on with the adult patients who suffer from mental illness.

The powers that be were suffering from what I call, ‘Shut up and go away syndrome.’  Sadly I’ve seen it time and again. I’ve had to access mental health services for myself and people close to me. I also volunteered on a crisis line about eight years back and have heard this story from multiple people. Basically what happens is sometimes people go to the hospital in need of help and are refused. Suicidal people are turned away routinely. If you’ve never taken a suicidal person to the hospital right now you’re saying, ‘what do you mean? Don’t they HAVE to take them?’  Nope.  I took someone close to me to the hospital because they were threatening suicide. They had attempted before and had a history of severe mental illness. A doctor looked me straight in the face and said, ‘If he wants to kill himself, we can’t stop him.’  We were sent home. ‘Shut up and go away syndrome’ is very common and it really thrives when you cut services to mental health.

Of course you’re never outright told to shut up and go away, but that got me thinking, what would it look like if you did? What if we lived in a society that not only encouraged troubled people, or people who are not fully productive for whatever reason, to commit suicide? What if it were not just encouraged? What if it were subsidised by the government as a means of saving money?

That’s when Charlie Gower walked in, sat down on my couch and basically said, ‘Here’s what it would look like. Here is my story.’ It was all there in a flash and I started writing.

As you know if you follow this blog at all I have been pretty open about my struggle with mental illness and suicidal thoughts have been a part of that struggle. I’ve had days where I’ve laid in bed and had to force myself to count my reasons to live. I suspect a lot of people do. For that reason this book was difficult to write. It forced me to take a look at some of the thoughts and beliefs that I’ve held and that others have had toward me.

I put it away for a few months, but came back to it. Largely because I keep seeing news stories of young people who have taken their own lives recently. It takes me back to a time in junior high when a boy in my class committed suicide. I remember the devastation it caused all of us. My school was very small, one of those places where everybody knows everybody. I remember that funeral and how awful it was, and If I’m being honest, the times over the years when I’ve contemplated taking my own life, I have gone back to that time in my mind and remembered how horrific it was for everyone involved.

It seems to be the thing to say now when you’re mad at someone or have a disagreement that someone spouts the phrase, ‘you should just go kill yourself’.  Don’t believe me? Go look at the comments section of YouTube. This has become like a plague. For that reason I had to pick it up again. I had to finish.  Who is anyone else to say you should remove yourself from the world? Every life matters, and that’s the basic theme of this work.

I’m very proud of this book. It’s set in Halifax (in an alternate reality of course) and will be out hopefully next summer.

One Crow Sorrow by Jessica MacIntyre Review

One Crow Sorrow by Jessica MacIntyre Review.

Jessica MacIntyre’s NaNoWriMo Page

So, today I wanted to talk to you about something that I’ve decided to do. I’ve thought about doing NaNoWriMo ever since I found out about it last year. I was too late for last November, but with the event still well over a month away I’ve decided to give it a go this year.

If you don’t know what that is I’m going to post a link to their website below. Basically what happens is that during the month of November, writers from all over the world embark on creating a 50,000 word novel. There is also a youth program that involves a more flexible word count for people between the ages of 13 and 18. My daughter is participating as well.

Here’s the thing though. I didn’t want to do it alone. The point of NaNoWriMo, it seems, is to create a network of people who are all doing the same thing you are. Even though I have four books in print now with more on the way, writing a new book is always a challenge. My usual workload for the day is normally never above one to two thousand words. I just find I get sloppy after that. I’ve never written a book in a month. I’ve always given myself at least two to three months of writing time, so this will be a first for me.  For that reason I’ve decided to create a page on Facebook with others who are going to participate this year.

But then I decided I’d take it a step further. Not only am I going to attempt to write my own book, I’m going to coach other people, as much as I can, with their attempt. Meaning I want to get as many people as possible on that page who’ve never written a novel before. Since I’ve put my work out there I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to who’ve told me that they’ve either always wanted to write a book, or that they started writing a book at some point and then got stonewalled. I’ve struggled with this myself in the past, but in the last few years, I’ve learned a few tricks that may help you push through. The important part is getting to the end and learning not to worry about anything else until you do.

So with NaNoWriMo just around the corner I’d like to invite you to join my Facebook group. If you have been dreaming of starting your novel, now is the time. I’d love to see you in the group. Come on over and introduce yourselves, and have a look around at NaNoWriMo’s page. You might be amazed at what you can accomplish with a deadline and some coaching. We can do this together! Let’s go!

 

http://nanowrimo.org/en/dashboard

https://www.facebook.com/JMNanowrimo

FREEBIE WEEKEND!!

Two of my books are FREE this weekend. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Links below.

US Kindle Store

The Vampires of Soldiers Cove:

When 24 year old Rachel Landry, who suffers from a debilitating mental illness, receives a knock at her door one night from a stranger she gets an offer she can’t refuse.  The chance to live as a vampire, gaining eternal life and relative sanity seems like a great plan.  Soon she comes to realize she has been turned for a specific purpose and her vampire existence may be short lived.  Also the handsome stranger may not be as much of a stranger as she thought.  Facing her demons along with new enemies she must come to rely on her own strength to save her life, and the life of her new clan.            

http://www.amazon.com/The-Vampires-Soldiers-Cove-ebook/dp/B00C50I28U/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

The Slave Queen (paranormal erotica):

After being chosen by a King to be his bride, Lady Iliya is taken to a castle far away to be wed to King Roman. On the night of her wedding, just as she is about to discover the mysteries a man holds, she is kidnapped and taken to an underground world full of strange creatures. The Satyr King, Ramses, wants her not just to be a Queen in his strange world, but to be a sexual Queen in his bed both with him, and others who he will choose. Now it is up to King Roman, with the help of his knights, including young Sir Henry who is also in love with the Queen, to rescue her.

http://www.amazon.com/Slave-Queen-Book-One/dp/1484040325/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378488894&sr=1-2

Canadian Kindle Store

The Vampires of Soldiers Cove

http://www.amazon.ca/Vampires-Soldiers-Cove-ebook/dp/B00C50I28U/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366370183&sr=1-1

The Slave Queen

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Slave-Queen-ebook/dp/B00C9IHK5E/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378489039&sr=1-2

 

UK Kindle Store

The Vampires of Soldiers Cove:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vampires-Soldiers-Cove-Jessica-MacIntyre/dp/1477693858/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378489108&sr=1-3

The Slave Queen:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Slave-Queen-Book-One/dp/1484040325/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378489108&sr=1-2

 

 

 

Hey writers! Cut this out!!

So as I’m trolling through my Facebook newsfeed I’ve been coming across something that other writers are posting more and more. It’s starting to irk me a little bit. Now, I certainly don’t mean to insult anyone here, that’s not my aim. This post is made purely out of confusion…and maybe a tad of anger.

What I’m seeing are questions like this:

“Hey guys! What do you want to see more of in the books you read?”

“What do you guys think is over done?”

“Should I write my next book about witches or about demons?”

It puzzles me when I see these pop up from authors for a multitude of reasons.  Firstly I think to myself, “Why do you care?” Why do you care what people want to see more of in the books they read? That’s not a question you should be asking your potential audience. That’s a question that as a writer, you should be asking only YOURSELF.

I strongly feel that to be a writer you need to be able to sit down and write the book that YOU want to read. Vampires are not what a lot of people want to read about right now. I can’t tell you how many times people have rolled their eyes at me when I’ve told them I’m working on a vampire series and said, “Yuck! I’m so sick of vampires.” You know what? Fuck you! I like vampires and I especially like mine and if you have no love for the undead then go find another book to read. It’s not my job as an artist to please you. It’s my job to write the story I need to tell. If it involves vampires and you are cynical about that, well, that’s just too freakin’ bad buddy. Go find something else. I’m not writing for you. Not that I don’t appreciate the people who do like my stories, because I do. I appreciate the hell out of those people, but I can’t exist to please them.

I think a lot of this attitude comes from my early years of writing. When I decided that I was going to attempt to write seriously, about ten years ago now, what I first wrote were screenplays. I read everything I could get my hands on about how to write a screenplay and I apply a lot of those lessons to my novels. For instance, I have NO PATIENCE for filler! When I’m reading a book I can always smell padding. I try my best not to do it and I HATE reading books that are padded. One book I read recently, of a very popular series, was about four hundred pages. You know what? That book could have cut out at least a hundred pages and not lost any of the story at all. I won’t read the rest because a lot of it is just padding. I’d rather read a two hundred and fifty page story that is ALL story than to sift through four hundred pages of filler and purple prose.

Something else you learn as you study screenwriting is that the worst thing you can do is to try and write for the market place. Screenwriters (and other writers too I would imagine, but this is the first place I personally learned of this concept) have a word for people who write based on what’s popular or what other people tell them is a good idea. That word is HACK! When you try to write simply for sales or for the sake of gaining popularity you will quickly lose the respect of other screenwriters, the good ones anyway.

It makes me shake my head whenever I see a young writer (or any writer) asking the masses, “What should I write?” If you need to ask, perhaps you’re not a writer OR you’re ignoring the real writer within you. Writers KNOW what they want to write and do it no matter what anyone else thinks. If you want to write that rock opera staring grumpy cat then do it! If that’s what’s in your heart then write it, just give it some fucking feeling, and don’t pad it full of crap I don’t need to know and don’t care about! Make it all story, just write what’s in your heart. The world doesn’t need what other people think you should give. The world needs what you know instinctively that you have. Don’t shortchange yourself, and don’t shortchange your readers out of giving something that only you can provide.  Even if it’s a topic that has been well worn, nobody will tell it quite the way you will. You don’t need anyone’s approval to write what’s in your heart, so stop asking! Grow some balls and write YOUR story!

Writer’s block

I thought I’d talk a bit about something that all writers struggle with from time to time. Writers block! If you follow writers on Facebook or Twitter sooner or later you’ll see one or more of them talking about their tangle with writers block. I’ve struggled with it myself, although not in the way that you might think.  There are two types of writers block as far as I’m concerned. I’m going to break both of them down here.

Writers block type 1: Being stuck creatively.

I have struggled with this one from time to time. This is when you get stuck in the details of your story. For me it’s not that I have a lack of ideas, but sometimes when I’m attempting to execute the idea I get stuck as to how I’m going to get the characters from point A to point B. I know what A and B are, I just can’t figure out how to bring them together. This type of block is usually remedied by going back to the beginning and re reading to see if you can open the story up a little wider from the outset. Sometimes you just need to look at the situation your characters are in and make it broader or give them another problem. I can usually cope with this type of block in a few sessions of brainstorming or going for a bus ride. When I’m blocked creatively the best place for me is on a metro transit bus. I’ll put my earphones in and ride around for a few hours while I think about it. This will usually lead me to a solution

 

Writers block type 2: Being stuck emotionally.

This one is harder. I am struggling with this one as I work on a stand-alone novel in between books for my vampire series.  It’s a hard book for me to write emotionally. There’s no creative block, but there’s an emotional block. What do I mean by that? Being blocked emotionally when writing means you are second guessing the material, or worried about people’s reactions to it. I’ll be lucky to have a draft of this book that’s anywhere near ready for sale by next summer. I have to go slow. Whenever I pull that one out to work on it I get emotionally drained. It’s an issue I’ve dealt with and one that’s painful for a lot of people to acknowledge. It’s an important book for me to write because it’s so therapeutic, but I can’t help but wonder what people will think of me when/if they read it. The one word I’d use to describe this type of block is fear.

Fear is life’s great motivator. We are all motivated by fear. When fear of standing still becomes greater than the fear of moving forward that’s when we make changes. With this project I’ll have to have the fear of not doing it be greater than the fear of letting people read it in order to move forward. I’m determined to get there, but it won’t be easy. Some people have wonderfully written books sitting in their hard drives or desk drawers that we’ll never see because the writer just can’t bring themselves to release it emotionally for whatever reason. The fear of having others read their work is still greater than the fear of never having let it out in the first place and so they are at a standstill.

 

So if you’re a writer (or any creative type really) what type of blocks do you struggle with? How do you overcome them? I think it’s good to swap stories as you never know what might help or inspire someone else.

One Crow Sorrow eBook is LIVE!!

The paperback will be a few more days but the eBook is live right now.

http://www.amazon.com/Vampires-Soldiers-Cove-Sorrow-ebook/dp/B00ET9W97U/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377698355&sr=1-4

One Crow Sorrow eBook is LIVE!