Sunday Synopsis

Missed my Sunday Synopsis last week.  As late as it is getting to be, I almost missed this one and this week I have no excuse. (Guess I did miss it. It was before midnight when I started writing this.)

I have been a bad blogger this week, but it is not because I am not writing, to the contrary, I have vested a good 5000 words into this new project this week and that is half as far as I got into the last one in four months. The crime novel is parked and this new work is spilling over from my brain. I have a rough outline and the chapters have already formed in my brain from beginning to end. Now, it is a matter of getting the words down on paper.

I can’t do the NaNoWriMo style of writing a thin story from beginning to end, then going back to heavily edit. I finish a chapter and then I have to go over and over it until I get it just right. I want the researched details there. I want the voice of the characters established without too many words. Personality is what I work with as the plot develops so I don’t want to wait four chapters in to flesh out character profiles. There is some history to develop these personalities, but the bulk of the back story will come out as the story unfolds.

The point is, I am writing. It is flowing well and I like where it is going. I had to add some physical violence to my gunshot scene to make it more realistic and believable. I had not intended for things to get that dark in the beginning but that is where it needed to go.

Enough about that.

In 1952, I learned from my research, Milledgeville State Hospital, a gigantic institution, the largest in the world, housed more than 11,000 patients committed from every section of the state of Georgia. A facility designed to care for “idiots, lunatics, epileptics, and the insane.”  To put that into perspective, there were 36 counties in GA with a smaller total population in 2010, and over 100 in 1950 with a smaller population. Milledgeville was one of three state run facilities.

That speaks volumes to the society’s level of intolerance.

Removed.

Carted away.

Institutionalized.

Locked up.

To be cared for by, “People more capable.” To be treated, medicated, mistreated, and possibly “restored.” Electrocuted and lobotomized without consent. Possibly returned to their communities “restored,” months, years later, or never. There is a cemetery there that literally thousands of “unclaimed” are buried in.

We haven’t found all of the solutions yet, but we have come a long way from where we were.

I would most likely fit into the lunatic category.

Are we more or less humane?
Filed under: Sunday Synopsis Tagged: epileptics, idiots, insane, lunatics, Sunday Synopsis, writing