The cyclothymia collective

I have had the nicest week. No work at the office, so I have been riding my horse and working on my NaNoWriMo novel re-write. I may have mentioned before that while I wrote compulsively as a teenager, I had never finished a piece of fiction before this. I stopped writing fiction in college and turned to technical writing. NaNoWriMo was great because I had to complete a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. And I did it, with two days to spare.

Never having finished anything before, I have no experience with rewriting a piece of fiction. I had no idea that it could be so engrossing, and so much fun. I just came to the part where the main characters have to part and I got choked up. Silly, but true. And surprising.

A whole new world is opening up for me. I have always been creative. I have made quilts and had photographs published, designed websites, and done other thingsbut none of them has been as exciting as this.

When I was 7 years old my father brought home his Smith-Corona typewriter and I fell in love. I started writing plays and then advanced to longer pieces, some of which I did finish...but when the BP kicked in around 8th grade the writing ceased to be a reasoned activity and became a love-hate-addiction kind of relationship. I was in the habit of writing, but went through periods when I couldn't write, and then doubted everything I had written. And then in college I just gave up. It was just too hard.

Twenty-five years have passed. I've been on Lithium for eight years now. The general bellief is that Lithium will kill your creativity, but I am no so sure about that. In these eight years I have taught myself web design and have created websites for work, charities and hobbies; I have gotten reinvolved in photography and learned a great deal about Photoshop; I have bought a horse and started to learn the complex discipline of dressage, and now...now I am rewriting MY NOVEL.

It may not be a great novel, but it is MY NOVEL. It is something I had given up planning or hoping to do. Having evidence of this thing which for so many years I wanted to do but was unable to do, is thrilling.

I owe it all to being on meds. Maybe other mood stabilizers can do the same for people; Lithium has done this for me. I wanted to write about my experience with it in order to put a positive story about it out there to let people know it can happen. Lithium doesn't mean saying goodbye to creativity.

In a lecture in 2000 at the Manic Depressive Association of Boston (highlights of lecture here "Dr. Frankenberg presented a study of bipolar artists that were asked how their creativity fared now that they were taking lithium. One-third said their creativity was great, one-third noticed no difference, and the remaining one-third thought it had suffered."