Hi. I new here and was just recently diagnosed. I spent my whole life thinking that I was just a little different due to my personality or artistic temperment. I never thought that it would be because of Asperger's until people at work started to refer to me as Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. I then started to study Asperger's and have been trying to get an official diagnosis for the past 9 months.
I went to college to be a filmmaker. While I got a degree in that, I also received a degree in Art History. It was one of those more crazy things you do in school. I heard a lot of the kids complaining about how hard it was to memorize everything required for the classes. I found it extremely easy. It was easy to find patterns and similarities in a single artist's work and to put it within a larger movement.
After college, I worked a typical 9 to 5 job that wasn't in my field. I spent my free time making movies. Then I started to write books and began to self-publish them. Even though I have had one of my films shown at a film festival in India, I have been more successful as an author. I'm not a big reader of fiction. I was never trained as a writer. My first book received some mixed reviews. Some thought it was hard to follow. Some, like the first professional review, called it a literary masterpiece and compared it to Catcher in the Rye except better.
I don't know what to do when I have young people tell me that they like my books and want to know what advice I can give them. I learned to write by watching TV and movies and by listening to music. I don't read books, unless I saw a movie and want to know what is going to happen later on in the series. I taught myself how to write screenplays. I spent the majority of my time in high school writing and re-writing scripts. While most people were out socializing and spending time with their friends, I was busy studying the films of people that influenced me and writing. I considered that more important.
The other issue I am having comes from the fact that I write more romantic stories. I am having women fall in love with the male characters in my books. Several women have told me that they wish they would have read my book earlier in life. I was able to explain men and their feelings in a way that nobody else has been able to. They are finding a beauty in it that I'm not seeing. Although I tried to put a certain amount of drama in the book, I intended for the majority of it to be a comedy. I don't know what is causing women to cry. And I have no idea what is making women fall in love with the male character. I put no thought into that character. I write about the type of woman that I would want to date. The guy is always me and what I would do in those situations with a girl like that. It makes it very hard to accept a compliment from a woman that says the male character was her favorite in a love story since some other series, especially since the guy is me.
I've heard that you're supposed to write about things that you know about. I write about love because I don't really understand it. I'm always hoping to make sense of it as I write.
12 Nov 2012, 4:05 pm
