I’ve never thought much about it, but maybe the fact that I attract few friends and develop mostly adversaries is a disadvantage in my life as a writer. Historically, I have used this kind of rejection and disinterest to increase my focus on the craft. At a certain point, I stopped trying to get others to like me. That’s right, I am not afraid to tell the readers or the people I counsel the truth.

Perhaps, the reason I have taken to writing in the first place is because I find the world, I inhabit to be full of blood-sucking vampires. In writing, I opt to craft a world in which I can convey, my bloodletting experiences in a likable manner. I always edited and edited to get the words right, but then found there was no one around to read my work.

Before I started learning how to market my writing, I developed a strategy to get noticed. I figured I would write a memoir that would be good enough to grab peoples’ attention. Then all those poetry years might get increased visibility. Then, I could use my status to write a book to change the way treatment providers work with psychosis.

Starting Out with A Memoir

I wrote the memoir about a two-year period when I believe I was a targeted individual. I went through this time without having much emotional support. I was labeled as psychotic and the people who were forced to help me out did so in a begrudging manner. Don’t get me wrong, I was grateful to avoid homeless shelters, but supporters did not want to know about what I was going through and were mostly controlling and negative while I worked tirelessly.

I wrote the memoir to let them and the world know what it is like to have America’s secret-society-security-force taunting you. I wrote and rewrote for eight years. I got the thing good enough to earn a contract and got a lot of help with editing. Maybe editing is a privilege I don’t always have, but I like to think I used it to repeatedly improve my craft. I broke the contract because they wanted to misrepresent my political views. I got five-star reviews and several awards.

But alas, I didn’t have the friends, the know-how or the community to get the feedback I needed. Many friends accepted free books and did not read or review them. Some just started to be hostile and used my vulnerability and further marginalized me politically. Sales never took off. I have continued to feel just the way most people treat me, like I am obsolete.

What it is Like to Survive Without Friends:

So, I am forty-seven years old and have learned a great deal about how to survive without friends. I have come to accept this reality quite well. I am not ashamed to say it. But to survive and maintain my career despite a security force being against me, I had to learn how to overcome what I have come to term the “trickster” phenomenon.

When someone has power over me like a parent in a family, a boss in an administration, a teacher in a department, or a nurse on a treatment team, I may sense that they have a bone to pick with me. Then in informal or formal secret society meetings, I get this sense that they may spread negative words about me or my writing. I may sense this kind of gossip and even see it in the behavior of secret society members. If I see this happen and believe that the whole team has turned against me because of the one or two people who clearly have a bone to pick with me, it is possible that I might act to increase this phenomenon exponentially. Hurt and hostility can be sensed interpersonally. Control and humiliating abuse can be enhanced.

Defining Systemic Abuse as a Spiritual Trickster:

Thus, if I sense and disapprove of this kind of systemic abuse, I put out hostile energy that will ensure that the team will turn against me and amp up their efforts to control me. In the past, I have done things like move to the inner-city where no one knows me, move across the country to start over again, or lose touch with people who seem to tolerate me from these past lives. Running and starting over again is something I have done repeatedly in my life. That is the main reason I have no friends. Like Tom Waites says in a song, “You build it up; you break it down; And then you burn your mansions to the ground.” I have done this repeatedly throughout the various stages of my life. One doesn’t have to be a substance user or a musician to experience this phenomenon.

Carl Jung talked about the spiritual reality of the trickster archetype. A trickster is a spiritual figure in mythology that will lie and cheat to gain material advantage. Hence, I have learned to address all signs of control and systemic abuse as though they are spiritual tricksters. Instead of getting angry and running, I stay and focus on ignoring the trickster. Instead, I put out positive spiritual energy that will pray and hope that the sign of control is just a trickster.

In order to have a career and make a livable wage, I did have to get the security force off my back. I may still see signs of it; but doing so does little to interrupt me now. In other words, I did have to learn to disrupt this powerful trickster system that secret societies reinforce. When I see signs that people are holding me in a negative light and I believe that one or two people is misrepresenting me in a negative way, I face this negativity with positive prayerful energy instead of hostility. Then, those one or two people who are gossiping about me in their secret society won’t have success. The key is to see the persecution picture and prayerfully and spiritually disrupt that reality. Let them think you have been neutralized. Play the part! Punch with words!

Feeling Like I Keep Coming Out on the Losing End:

I must confess, that I have been losing this battle on several fronts in my life as of late. Last month, in my monthly report to my email followers, I admitted that I believed this was going on and I was upset about it. Admitting that people are against me is rarely a good idea when it comes putting out contrasting energy and prayers that people will not be against me. However, even in my highly scrutinized writing, I have done this.

As an author I often feel unsuccessful. I never feel like I have enough followers and likes. If the reader checks out my Facebook page, they may indeed see why I feel this way. And complaining about this even here probably doesn’t help.

Investing Money in a Prayer

However last month I paid for a consult regarding building my writing platform with a Canadian named Kimberly Grabas at: www.yourwriterplatform.com. This was my Christmas present to myself and Kimberly was quite generous with her time and advice. Turns out the hard work I was doing on my DIY website was just not up to industry standards. Nor was my brand,

Thus, I have had a less productive month in terms of output on my blog and spent a lot of time drafting my brand, breaking it down and turning it around. And I have hired a tech person in India named Partap to build me a wordpress.org website.

Starting over means admitting that I burned a great deal of time and money trying to do it myself. But I work and save money and over time this means I can invest in marketing over time. Even though having nice visual representation and a concise display of things like my values and mission feels counter to my belief in the value of my writing craft, I am putting my hopes and dreams in it. Maybe playing the game to get more followers will help my writing get the attention I feel it deserves. Really, it is about getting out from under the people who I believe are holding me down.

I chose to see it this way: in trying to get my brand right, I am prayerfully putting out the energy into the universe to counter the fact that I am surrounded by people who want to foil my efforts. I am putting out energy into the universe that the people with power over me who are gossiping in their contrived secret societies and trying to minimize and kill my work before it gets off the ground, will be disrupted.

In fact, I have been giving my power over to all the people who want to keep me down too much lately. My email list can become my community of support. I have built one up even with a DIY website. I am going to improve my newsletter efforts. Plus, I believe in my work and feel it is getting better, not worse. With a wider following I can get around the people who are holding me down, diminishing my work behind my back, and winning.

Writing for Freedom:

And the greatest part about it is that I still don’t need to have friends. I can be free to me my own free, cantankerous-ass self. Stay tuned, I will be releasing my new website branding schizophrenia into solvable components soon.

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Since I started writing my memoir ten years ago, I have not struggled with writer’s block. It’s true, I have produced drafts of my second book that were so bad, I scrapped them. But I was always able to use writing to help organize my thoughts without feeling defeated. Sure, I have taken a few vacations, but I always did that with a project or two on my mind.

Today, however, I cannot get a project started. For the past few days, I have been chewing things over in my mind and I feel totally frozen. I retreat in great frustration with my wife Barbara and my dog Jayla through the smoke-filled Bay Area. We drive out to the coast adjacent to Half Moon Bay. As the Camp Fire rages hundreds of miles to the north, I spend the drive trying to figure out what was happening to me to get me feeling so stuck.

It is true I recently heard from a high school English teacher who used to support me who read my memoir. She made a point of sending word through my mother that she was impressed with how I was able to get into my own head: had I ever considered writing fiction?

Enthralled by the compliment (and yet challenged,) I spent the week thinking about how I might add fiction writing to my platform to help tell some of the untold stories of the urban world I know. Curious characters I have known flashed through my head and I struggled to figure out how to create a fictional story out of them. When it finally came to be time to write, I could not start a story or even a personal essay on psychosis-like I usually do.

When we arrive at the Butano State Park, I find myself sorting through a couple of different identities as a writer. I know I felt comfortable and artistic as the memoirist. I likewise have felt purposeful using my experience in group therapy to reconstruct psychosis into solvable components. It hasn’t been until I have been recently been struggling to get published on blogsites or magazines to increase my following that I have become down on my writing.

As I watch my dog saunter up the fire trail, I remind myself that if I am going to publish a book that helps change the way clinicians work with psychosis, my voice and identity is going to have to be quite different. I am currently practicing changing my audience to providers and occasionally to family members. However, as I have done this, I don’t really feel I fit as a psychotherapist with an academic voice.

It may sound strange, but I have an objection to the practice of using journal articles and research to reinforce what I say. I have learned that I don’t really learn well that way. I don’t trust research to tell the stories that I hear on the inner-city backward.

I prefer to write what I know from experience. This is the writing platform I have set up on my blog. In the fifteen years I have worked on a backward, I have become skilled at cracking open the real story in ways I don’t trust research to be able to do. When I write honoring academic tradition and research, I feel phony and disconnected. I feel I am not taking advantage of real-life knowledge and my career. Plus, I find I like to maintain the use of language such as “dumb-ass!”

We continue to ascend on a fire road until we reach a viewpoint we have been to some thirteen years ago. On that occasion, we had hiked with my father. I feel impressed that my father made it all the way up this road to the look-out back when he was sixty-five. It had been a lite day of hiking for me thirteen years ago but now I realize, I didn’t realize what I was putting him though.

I reflect on how I get much more of my learning from listening to music than I do from journal articles. I think that why I like to write in a way that honors lived experience. I acknowledge that I fear to write a successful book that changes the way therapists approach work with psychosis, I need to use some degree of research to be accepted. Although I have created a therapy platform, I know that I don’t know how to write a readable book that promotes it. I know I need to read more theoretical books to get ideas for how to approach the writing. I just don’t want to do it.

We continue to hike up the hill until we’ve been out for two hours. Our dog suddenly bounds after a chipmunk and disappears down the gulley through the brush and we call after her to get her to come back. I feel that age is slowing me down. I used to be far more fit. It is time to turn around.

When I read writers, who do get published in psychotherapy magazines, I feel like a different breed. Firstly, I am uncomfortable with writing a case study about the real experiences of my clients. Even if I disguise the name, it feels like a massive breach of their confidence. Additionally, when I hang out with therapists who might one day benefit from reading my book, I feel like a flagrant victim.

I have taken a couple of courses in trauma from industry leaders and have learned that I disassociate around other therapists. Listening to industry leaders, I have felt alienated when they have made fun of “psychosis.” One talked angrily about people who are “reversed” or unable to benefit. “Why can’t they just accept help!” The presenter had continued, “you can see them when they come into the room, they are as clear as day.” Of course, I was feeling like the presenter was referencing me because the techniques weren’t working for me. In this way, the comments coming from the trauma gurus only further alienate me.

I think about how I have sent essay after essay out for publication and received only rejections. It’s true sending stuff out is painful. I don’t like to wait 2-8 weeks or even four months for some journals to hear back. Sure, I could be more persistent. Still, some of my best personal essays are starting to feel like rehashing the same story again. And, no matter what angle I put on them, they don’t seem to make it into print.

In many ways I treat writing as though it is an equalizer. It is my response to feeling bullied and invisible to mainstream people. I didn’t go to an Ivy League school, I went to a commuter campus. Being invisible happened to me in my family, during schooling, at work (for example, after fifteen years of work, I just got my first five-year chip,) and in my volunteer efforts. I write dreaming that one day people will hear me.

In fact, this is the same weekend I have sent in edits to a well-known publisher to whom I have sent upward of fifty articles. Finally, they think I have put something together that they feel is worth a response. However, in doing so I face a challenge. Did I write to tell my true story, or did I write to tell the editor what I think they want to hear?

This the dilemma was exactly what happened with my memoir. I had a deal with a publishing company, but the editors were not forthcoming with the fact that they didn’t like my views on racial inequality or male sexual abuse.  In a sense, I saw it coming; but was living on a prayer. Then, in the last edit, they entirely removed those important themes from my work and I chose to break the contract and reclaim my work.

Back at the car, my wife drives. We drive through the shadows of the redwood trees. Out on the highway, the late afternoon sun shimmers through the smoke. We head for a dog-friendly beach.

I come across a Facebook dialogue in a group in which a group member was contemplating writing a fictional story about a childhood friend who was Native American. She received quite a talking to by the group about it being exploitative to tell a story about a marginalized culture when she was not from that culture.

Perhaps some of the reason I have struggled throughout the day is that I was thinking I should be able to write fiction when it isn’t a good fit for me. As a white male, I work primarily with people of color and although I know their lives intimately, their experience is just not my story to tell. I know they have more social barriers to overcome than I. It is ironic, I think, that the one Facebook story I looked up happened to tell me what I needed to hear.

I think for a spell about the lessons of the day. I write because I believe there is value in it. I likely have the smallest writing platform there is on the internet. I think I create quality content, but don’t attract followers. I know it is important not to let the expectations of others negate what one does and so I persist. I write to keep things simple and real.

It occurs to me that this is my writing platform. In a few minutes, I will watch my dog spritz about in the sand. Now, I am using my writer’s block to sharpen it. I may have a long way to go but I have a lot of years to sharpen it until I get clicks and likes and the things I need to get published. Perhaps the stress of getting published is taking more of a toll than I like to admit. Perhaps, sometimes there is just too much going on to get a piece of writing completed.

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