Aspie authors writing social interaction

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We (poets) don't have those, just editors.

I find promotion so impossible I don't really try. I like writing, I like being published (especially if it was a while ago, the first time something's out there I get nervous for it*), I'd like readers but I don't feel comfortable with the social interaction required in getting them.

I wish there were agents who specialised in autistic/socially anxious artists and getting our work out there and dealing with the public for us as intermediaries.

My editor for my collection is a wonderfully nice woman but bad at promotion. She's aspie too. I didn't know this when getting the book published, she told me later.

Next time I'm going for an NT editor or one of those autistic types who get extroverted when they're passionate about something. Not a mirror image of me. I love when an editor from a magazine/ezine/anthology will help me with promotions.

*does anyone else find the act of seeing their work freshly published a bit akin to how a parent would feel sending their kid off to school? Like it's on show and might meet all sorts of people along the way now so just hoping it isn't too vulnerable...

^I'm not published yet but that is how I imagine it would feel.

It gets better. It really is like putting a child out there into the world. Sooner or later, you get proud of them (I mean 'it') being their (I mean 'its') own thing. Just every time, at first, I feel vulnerable for the thing. And first draft always feels so very unready. I don't know much about writing novels or stories but it takes 10 drafts til I'm ready to show someone. I love the energy of a first draft though.

Today, I finished off a poem which started autobiographically about a boy I knew as a kid on holiday who gave me a shark tooth necklace. It sort of ended up sounding like adults and the end of a relationship.

My autobiographical works end up with fiction in and my fiction ends up with autobiography in it as I work. It's why I'm glad I don't write prose, where fact versus fiction really does matter in terms of which genre it is.

I'm feeling so incredibly lazy at the moment. Hopefully in 2 weeks when my illness spell and my excited spell are over and my tiredness spell hasn't begun yet, I'll be more active with my writing.

Even when your job doesn't earn you money, it's hard not to feel a certain sort of guilt over not working.

Christmas and mum being off her job didn't help. And going online all the time doesn't help as I get tempted to just type stuff online and not do any work.

FWIW, I've read a lot of prose articles and come to the conclusion that either someone was disabled or someone was picking on me. My prose isn't all that bad. My paragraphs are average length.

This gives me hope in a world where we communicate mostly via prose and speech. It's already bad that I find talking to people hard without feeling as if I find typing to people hard, too.

I gave myself Christmas off, but after a few false starts hit the ground running again with my writing.

I didn't except the day itself but mum's a teacher and we live next door so it's sort of hard to not have a bit of a holiday. She's back at work tomorrow so hopefully that will put me into the work mindset.

I was really unwell on Saturday night. I almost fainted. I think I know what the cause was but still, I'm not sure I'm 100% feeling well or whether I should tell a doctor or whatever. But I write almost every day so I find it hard to not do just because I was unwell a few days ago. I feel weird when I don't write.

Hm this one I'm writing at the moment has left me perplexed if it's good or not (not posting on here in case it counts as 'published', increasingly that's how poems put up online are seen).

Good: it's musical, it speaks about specific concrete things in a specific place, it doesn't use archaic language, it has a semi unique voice (even if that voice is juvenile)
Bad: I'm scared people will see the juvenile voice as 'me now' which it isn't, it isn't like a contemporary poem found in the magazines and ezines I read, it's more like a song, its metre is strange so it isn't formal poetry either

I hate that way that readers always assume first person in a song or a poem is the writer. It doesn't happen in prose because prose is split into fact and fiction. Usually (as with this one) for me, it's somewhere in between fact and fiction and me and not me.

I'm finding elsewhere people discouraging me writing in a flooded market. But I can't not write and I feel the need to publish, too, and be read. In an ideal world, I'd be doing poetry readings and things but I struggle at them. Maybe what I need is a partner, someone who's good at delivery but can't write, so we can collaborate together. But performers (unlike poets) expect pay and I lack money.

My novel is in first person and the character is not me but me in a way. I agree this is easier in a novel (assumed fictional). I have heard it done well in poems though.

It amazes me the way non-writers have opinions on whether someone else should be a writer

Have you considered performing your poems via youtube? This would allow for recording in private and editing it ect.

I think if I more often wrote musical things I would do. (And if I didn't sound/look like a child and want to be published more in magazines and books than elsewhere)

I know. I wonder if saying 'only 5% of poems sent to magazines get published' is something which non writers assume only unpublished writers would say? I've known far more successful poets than me who mention it, it's simply a fact which is much lamented in the poetry world. I've been in that 5% and I'll be in that 5% again, probably.

Anyway people write to be read and because they need to write. So I'll keep writing and submitting.

There's one prose poem I have which terrifies me which I know means it will get published if I send it out because my most vulnerable stuff always does but I'm scared to send it out because it's so vulnerable. I think I'll ultimately put it in a contest or something. At least that way if it does get success, I get cash.

I was only really considering YouTube because (I assume this person was dyslexic or illiterate, if not it's just rude) they said 'lots of people write poetry but not many people read their poems to others'. My stuff's out there, if someone's dyslexic they can pick it up and have someone else read it to them, all I want/need to do is the writing, editing and imagining bit.

We were talking at writing class today about writing for the self versus writing for others.

As an autistic poet I always find it counter intuitive.

When I write for myself, people read in their own stories which are completely different to mine. Sometimes this is amazing like when I wrote about a teenage breakup and an old woman read the death of her husband into it. I'm glad she had that because she said it helped with the grieving process.

When I write for others, I just get it all muddled up and nervous about my potential audience.

This was a small part of it all, of course, and it was for poets at any level so they quite liked my strange little ways of looking at texts and writing.

I don't want to write about politics. It isn't healthy for me to write about politics. But at some point I'll need to tackle it.

My second book is going as planned. I finally have a female major character that I can actually stand writing about. I decided to use a theme of "gender roles" in my second book. My book is about demons and in my book it's the incubi's job to go on human realm missions to collect and provide "energy" (if you know what an incubus and succubus are, you know what I mean) to provide pleasure to his succubus wife while she stays home and just looks pretty. Succubi women are usually models and have assistants, photographers and even a "glamour team" to do her makeup, hair and nails. While incubi men make good actors, rockstars and male models.

The only female character in my book that I can actually stand wants to break this role of wearing a cute outfit and full makeup every day not because she doesn't like being a female demon but because she's sick of being eye and arm candy and just wants to be herself for once.

I've been working on a novel since getting my anthology of short fiction published last year, and as of late, it's beginning to feel like something of a chore. I've seriously been giving consideration to going back to writing short stories and making another anthology out of them. Short fiction seems to be what I excel at.
Who knows, I'll probably go back to the novel, eventually.

I haven't worked on what I'm writing for days. I'm distracted by a bunch of other things so hopefully I'll get back on track.

I feel like I'm getting rejected because my poetry is immature like something a teenager might write. But I don't have the conventional lifestyle of an NT adult, probably never will.

Ever since elementary school I've had problems writing. The thoughts often get distorted with planning. I have also a difficult time expressing emotions I do however try to right these at times.

Here are two of them:


I wonder, I wonder
On a day of lightning and thunder

As the rain poure down my face
And the clouds cover up the space

Will it be cold?
When I meet her eyes
As I fall upon
That gentle smile

I wonder, I wonder
On a day of lightning and thunder

-----------

Your body
My soul

Collides together 
Like the stars above us

The atmosphere
Becomes humid

And only the sense of your smell
Lingers in the air