A question for the writers out there

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How do you incorporate your AS issues into your writing, without being didactic or preachy? I've recently made a decision to start being more open and vocal about it in my writing--which has mostly been non-fictional music and cultural commentary--and I've started to write about how it affects my relationship with music.

yet i still feel awkward about it. any tips?

(i would post a link to my most recent piece but the system is telling me i have to wait because i'm a new user)

i focus on the idea of difference, rather than the specific kind of difference.
there is hardly anyone who won't be able to identify with that.

many people have felt the effects of prejudice. i read all about this before i even figured out what i was reading it for. i read feminist, gay, black studies, the holocaust, you name it. i saw myself in all of these.

a lot of the tropes of scifi--specifically the "misunderstood genius/mutant/alien" trope--can be read as autistic allegory. (it could be said that autistic literature found its voice here, first.) but it isn't limited to this single interpretation (most adolescents feel this way, anyway.)

it is much harder to project a sense of reality, as experienced differently--since we, too, have never known otherwise.
one of those who once tried, was david lindsay, in a voyage to arcturus. (in fact, i would wager that the majority of extremely strange & unorthodox artworks, were produced toward this goal...) probably it is easier to do this with images, since people are more repelled by language they can't immediately grasp. --and music, which has a long tradition of outsider-yelps.

My aspie traits and issues have been part of my writing before i even knew anything about aspergers. I have been told I am good at "painting a picture" with words. I didn't realize that i thought mostly in pictures and soundbites--and that it was not usual--until reading literature on how autistic ppl think vs. how NTs think. It translates into being an awkward speaker but it helps with my writing because i can visualize so well.

I struggled with depression my whole life and a few years ago began writing about it. Again, not knowing anything about aspergers at the time. Looking back over my writing, i can plainly see the struggles of an aspie mind in an NT world and how it played into depression. And how it handicapped the relationship between me and those trying to help me.

I don't know how all this plays into your music and cultural writing, having never read your stuff. (but if you want you can pm me the links because now i am curious.) But i am guessing that, without saying it in so many words, you may be putting it into more than you think. Maybe referring to it in a matter-of-fact way if needed for explanation would be helpful. But i think if it is too in-your-face it runs the risk of being discounted or trite, as ppl assume it is another "here's a good cause, let's jump on board and raise awareness." Or you get accused of "special snowflake syndrome" or the like.

I had ppl tell me they identified with a lot of my writing because of the vivid word pictures--some were folks who had experienced depression and found an understanding soul in my writing; others were folks who had not experienced it and were able to get a clearer picture of it from what they read.

Maybe, just be you. In writing as much as in life. As if you were having a chat with someone over a cup of coffee. Just my 2 cents.

Very descriptive! you too know how to paint pictures with words. After reading it, i will stand by my last statement. Just be you. I think it's easy to get caught up in trying to make people understand the larger picture of autism but what it comes down to is that saying, "when you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism." We are all different and i think you did a great job of portraying the view from your window of the world. Maybe a word of matter-of-fact explanation is helpful at times when you are portraying something extremely foreign to the NT world; but i think that for the most part, just painting the picture of what you see is enough to show people what the world looks like through autistic lenses. Just my 2 cents, you are welcome to take it or leave it. If i were still blogging i would send you a link too. i have thought of taking it up again...but life has been hectic and i haven't had time to give it the attention it needs.

Didn't mean to scare you off. I thought it was a good piece of writing. You have some different struggles than i do--i don't have the huge stimming issues in public. So i found that part informative. But i can relate to the shutting down and sometimes i want to shut down and find it a huge relief when life is too chaotic. Families are not such huge fans of this though. So i try not to do it.

I was writing long before I discovered AS or got diagnosed. But a lot of my writing has had to do with loneliness and feelings of disconnection from the world and the people around you, trying to connect, looking in from the outside, etc.

A lot of the characters in my fantasy novel are like me, although there is one who is more Aspergian than others.

Fiction and poetry is generally more effective for conveying differences and diversity. It gives you licence to really be yourself in a way that non-fiction doesn't. Readers tend to identify more with fictional characters and believe what they say and express.

I am an avant garde/outsider poet. I simply write without filtering it, meaning, I don't try to make it look like it's coming from someone neurotypical and then within that context try to assert who I am. I believe it's something that simply can't be done. Here's something I wrote:





New Blue

1.The equation of one part and the whole
2. One part of the one part of the equation
3. The partness 




One part of an equation. Is it nothing he said? Did I say something?




The active microcosmic archetype in terms of it's relationship with the active disguised spiritual extroversion self as known in terms of it's place in connection with attunement to the vibrations of the outer cosmic worlds as the domains of the space unknown or reverse collective unconscious, presents mechanisms which in their distance from that which constitutes this alternative idea of the mind, call attention to the need for a construction parallel to the idea of a robot, because the neo myth spectacles have now determined that robotics cannot exist without the idea of the humanoid servant and that this ideal is equivalent to the concept of a robot itself. 




Shades of blue formness

The partness

shades of blue

The equation between the part and the equation

shades of blue formness

The seed

shades of blue

The equation, the equationness, the equation part, the equations, the greater equation, and the greater equation network.

Blue shades of blue formness

Blues

That is the blue of

isness and isness




The parallel just mentioned is connected with the alter destiny parallel to online education.




1. One part of a network of networks of equations
2. One, is and an.




Times like these

Forms of blue shade and shade and shade

I don't have any forms

Theres no blue part of it that doesn't have any shade of time




It is time that people recognize that major threshold endeavors in the field of robotics must be put on hold until a model for a parallel to the ideal humanoid machine can be created, otherwise the phenomenon of online education will continue to distract people from focusing on a way of being that acknowledges the need for a quasi robot spirit vessel; A new yet old kind of medium that promotes the alter destiny.




When and where

Is of isness

Formness to blue

Shades

Is that formness of the form?

It didn't get it

Doesn't the blue know 




1. One equation of the part and one part of an equation as one part of an equation.
2. The moving equation, the inner and outer back and forth motion, and one equation of the part.




Blobs of blue floating in a bright intensity

A dancing serenity

One part of the one part of the equation

Amazing maze of beauty

A sign of strength, displaced ugliness can be.




And doesn't the knowing blueness see your finding?

Water in a mirror

One part of the one part of the equation

Shades of blue

Formness of blue

Of blue formness

One part of a network of networks of equations.

shades

The equation of one part and the whole.

She knows where the shady blue shades hide

The eyes of water

The equation of part one.

Say….. What did he say? What did he say? Once there was a young man lost in the deserts of Saturn. God came to him in the form of a twin. Through a telegram the young man was called by god to become the god of a new planet. From now on his name would be "Blue Shades Of Blue Formness". God gave him a pair of glasses and told him to put them on. He had many visions of all sorts of people coming out of elevators and getting onto subways. And so he cried and cried until his tears became a space voice. The space voice was the god of a mothership called "At times like these there is a nameless voice".

The iciness of the moaning swallow

Veiled darkness

The blueprint/declaration of one part of the equation

I swallowed my neck

The equation and an equation

shadeness of blue shaded

The other part of the other part

shadedness of

Blue of

shadiness form

The other part and another part.

The space voice taught him how to operate the mothership: "Forms of blue shade and shade and shade, I don't have any forms, Theres no blue part of it that doesn't have any shade of time." The staple of the plan for the creation of a new planet was that Pluto would be rehabilitated, because the sun almost answered no to the question: "Doesn't the blue know? And doesn't the knowing blueness see your finding?" But this course of action was not something ordered by god. Someone from planet Saturn named: "The one you lost who was never there" opposed this plan because of that, But the young man said that there was no god. Only the way of the motherships.

Sounds flow and tears trickle

Distorted glow

The moisture in the blood

A bead of glare

Your form glass said I wasn't for her

A blueprint declaration of the equation.

the question you know

you know

form glass

glasses form

Dark lenses of crying graspness 

A blueprint declaration of the equation.

"The one you lost who was never there" responded by attacking the young man's mothership, rendering it immobile. The ship cried and an ocean formed in it's forcefield and out of that a great tree grew. Each branch of the tree was a different plane. Some were forests, some were deserts, some were cities. The Spaceship's fuel became the magma inside the earth. Originally the young man was to become god of the blue planet, but he had been straying from the plans he had been given; he was on his way to the pluto of a virtual solar system. He got the rehabilitation confused with navigation. He began too early in activating the process "how can the true me pretend not to want your affection"?  So "the one you lost who was never there" and The greater god would rule the blue planet. "The one you lost who was never there" became a snake and entangled himself in the roots of the tree. The young man woke up when he heard music and left in a ship that had been carried inside the mothership. He destroyed the planet Saturn which reincarnated as Earth's heaven. 

The greatest shallow love is better than the loveliest profundity 

Real love is worse than the best shallow love

Shades of blue formness

The water was sad. My feelings were blue.

Neon water

Buzzing water

A still mirror

I waved at my wave

Water bed

The water was sad. My feelings were blue.

You can't be cool without wearing sunglasses

Moved by the touched feeling.

The similarity between the different levels of equations, parts, and super equations.

The taste of tears

Slick softness

Roaring softness

Wave of protection

Showering sweetness

Dark lenses of crying graspness 

Licking the water

Touching the boundary

Foaming glee

The air is kissed with your breath

The seeing eyes

Smoking brightness.

I drank myself in.

I swallowed my neck

 The voice of the mothership became a woman who rode a comet to Neptune. The comet told her that the young man was Seth and would ally himself with "the one you lost who was never there" and God. But she had no way of knowing that this was a bad thing. On Neptune she discovered that people were being recruited to build a Saturn space station, and that seth's mother had killed herself long ago. She then knew that God was not the true Creator. She fought off Neptune's servants of God, and went to Pluto. There she asked her sisters Banshee and Werewolf, to take her place on earth.

I will try to do things that must be done without trying because failure isn't wrong if it leads to victory. that is the real way to lose. 

Sadness is more beautiful than you think it is

Evil joy has more to offer than you think it does.

Happiness isn't as bad as you think it is.

Blue formness. There was shades of it.

Your hand channeling your presence

The beautiful terror of non negation

Puppy hatred

Internal night

The part of an equation as a part.

The shades were defined by the formness. It was blue.

The sun's wings, concealed blood, flowing gleam.

A great pink rejoicing. 

So many celebrations happening all at once.

giddy terror.

The visions are so blue they look like paint brushes

Rustling clarity

Bustling caution

The other part as the other part.

Franticly thorough affection

The blueprint/declaration as a part of the partness.

Chirping roughness

Disguised tenderness

4/5/6 and 3/2/3/2

They served as midwives, helping the spaceship over and over to give birth to it's voice, while singing a song to the moon: "Times like these, times like these, we say yes to times like these." The moon put a curse on them and they transformed into mermaids, swam into the deep and made love with each other to destroy the curse. 

Roads of the wind

The seed of the seed.

Blue shivers

Looking back from the future of the seed's seed.

Liquid pink

Seed of an imaginary relationship.

Sea of the heart

The other part as part other.

Pool of embarrassment

One equation of the part.

Hole in the water

One, is and an.

Opening in the air

The partness of one part.

Rolling splash

Teasing my vulnerability

The moving equation, and the inner and outer back and forth motion.

The double looking back.

The fight and the dance.

One part of an equation as one part of an equation.

They would then unite to become a beam that would bring the mothership voice's lullaby dream back to life. "At times like these how can we ever say no? how can we ever say no? how can we ever say no at times like these?" "Say no to what?" I said. Someone said say no to what he said "say no to what?"

I mainly have a character who has it or another mental illness in my writing. I love to write fanfiction or just general fiction.
I also like to incorporate some of the traits of it in my characters.