Comments on: Sick From Writing: The Side Effects Of Writing A Book https://booksbywomen.org/sick-from-writing-the-side-effects-of-writing-a-book-by-carol-lee/ Sun, 12 Feb 2017 23:11:17 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.3 By: Jennifer Griffin https://booksbywomen.org/sick-from-writing-the-side-effects-of-writing-a-book-by-carol-lee/#comment-48352 Sun, 12 Feb 2017 23:11:17 +0000 http://booksbywomen.org/?p=18203#comment-48352 This just happened to me as I wrote a chapter about recovering from perfectionism and all my chronic pain from it returned with a vengeance, suspecting a connection to the writing, yet not totally convinced. Then the next chapter was Adversity as a Gift and I had unexpected medical tests and as I waited for the results I tried to hurry through the chapter to escape another test. The med test came back poor and I added an Epilogue in the book about it and then worked on the gift of this illness.

]]> By: P.D. Workman https://booksbywomen.org/sick-from-writing-the-side-effects-of-writing-a-book-by-carol-lee/#comment-48349 Sun, 12 Feb 2017 21:39:02 +0000 http://booksbywomen.org/?p=18203#comment-48349 When you “live it” in your mind, your brain/body really don’t know the difference between whether something really happened to you, or you just imagined that it did. So all of those brain/body connections can make you physically sick or give you ptsd/other emotional symptoms.

I try to alternate between writing really gritty, frightening stuff with writing something lighter and easier. I also have to really watch my health when I am writing about physical disorders. I was incredibly tired when writing about untreated diabetes, mitochondrial disorder, and N24 disorder. Had a number of unusual symptoms when writing about EDS.

I have to be careful not to go ‘too deep’ when writing about abuse, addiction, violence, etc. And I have to recognize when I am reacting to things going on around me because of things that have happened to my characters rather than what is actually happening in real life. Not getting irritable and angry with my family. Not walking around grief-stricken because of a death. Trying to put that separation between me and my worlds.

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