Val Neil

Dark Fantasy Author

actuallyautistic

Author Burnout or Autistic Burnout?

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I’ve been in autistic burnout for two years. It took me a while to realize that’s what it was, because author burnout is a thing too. I was struggling to work on my book and figured it must be author burnout. But none of the suggestions for getting out of author burnout worked for me.

Authors get burned out by doing too much work. Indie publishing is hard — we have to wear all the hats associated with a small publishing business, because that’s what we are. There is writing, but there’s also working with cover artists, editing, newsletters, marketing and ad copy. A lot of writers hate all but the writing, but I actually enjoy them as they’re part of my special interest.

Then there is the constant need to produce. It’s all about the backlist — how many books you have in your catalog. More books equals more income, but it takes time to put out that work. Some authors use a rapid release model and push themselves to write a book a month (or more). While some authors can keep up that pace, many can’t and end up slipping into burnout.

When I looked at author burnout recommendations, it was all stuff like refill your creative well (read, travel, watch movies), hire an assistant, offload what you can, and don’t push yourself to write at a pace you can’t sustain.

Yeah, none of that worked for me.

Unlike neurotypicals, autistics get energy from our special interests and get super stressed when we can’t do them. I wasn’t writing too much; I wasn’t writing at all. And it was killing me.

I thought maybe it was just the stress of 2020 and everything that was going on in the world. That certainly fed into it, but I expected things to get better after the election and after the vaccine came out. It didn’t. Even when I stopped homeschooling for the summer, things didn’t get better. If anything it got worse because now I had all this free time and couldn’t do anything with it. I couldn’t focus on my book at all.

I tried again to refill my creative well. I set my book aside without guilt and watched movies and TV shows. After month I still wasn’t feeling better. Another month, same thing.

What the hell was happening to me?

Thing is, while some of my external anxieties around politics and covid were reduced, I still had massive stressors at home. The kids bickered constantly, or else they came in and interrupted me. Interruptions are brutal on autistics, and I was getting them nonstop. My executive function isn’t great, but it’s better than anyone else’s in the household, which means a lot of the small duties fall to me. With everyone home all the time they were piling up. Taking a weekend away did nothing, because all the demands and stressors were there when I came back. Except now they were magnified because I had stuff to catch up on since I’d been gone. It was death by a thousand cuts.

I really didn’t start to see a light at the end of the tunnel until the kids went back to school. Since my husband works from home now he’s been handling the morning shift so I can sleep in. I finally have some semblance of control over my schedule and far fewer interruptions. I’m able to work it again, though it’s still hard to get back into the headspace.

I’m not out of the woods yet and feel like I’m walking on a razor thin edge over a bottomless pit of despair. I make dinner for the kids but I can’t make dinner for myself. I cook a big batch of eggs at the beginning of the week so I don’t have to make breakfast every day. I’ve been leaving the pan in the sink to soak. Normally I’d wash the dish same day, but these days it sits there for a week until I need to use it again. This is something my husband used to do that drove me nuts. Now I’m the one doing it. I see it there and know it needs cleaned but can’t muster the energy to do it.

The kids being back in school comes with its own demands. There’s all the stuff surrounding my son and his IEP which I can’t avoid, but there’s also little crap like spirit days and book fairs and homework. Book fairs are fun — we always do that — but I always skip things like spirit days and I told my youngest I don’t care she does her homework. I’m cutting back where I can and focusing on the things that actually need doing. I’m trying to be easy on myself about this.

I’m working on Dark Mind again. It’s causing an undue amount of stress not to have it finished. Again, we autistics get energy from our special interests. I can’t move forward in the series until this is done, which is why am so stressed about it. I’m hoping to have this current revision done by the end of the year, although that might be a pipe dream. I was planning to hire a sensitivity reader for part of it, but I’ve been revising for two years now and the thought of having to do major revisions again terrifies me. I may be stressing over nothing as I try to do my research, but the worry is there. I don’t know that I can handle any more at this point. I just need it done and off my plate.

Don’t know where I’m going with this, except to say that I’m doing my best and hope to recover soon. Keeping myself afloat as best I can. Getting my special interest fix in ways that don’t stress me out as much — writing newsletters, interacting with fans, and writing

Accidentally Autistic: Marcus Brewer, About a Boy

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Welcome to my Accidentally Autistic series, in which I discuss headcanoned autistic characters — characters not formally declared autistic by the creators, but heavily coded that way, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Will and Marcus

Am I watching old favorites because I’m in a funk? Maybe.

About a Boy is about a snarky, self-centered man named Will who gradually learns to open up and make genuine connections with people. I love characters like this, so it’s not surprising I like this movie. The second main character is Marcus Brewer, a twelve year old boy who meets Will on the day that his depressed mother attempts suicide. He stalks Will and forces him into a mutually beneficial friendship.

Marcus reads as autistic to me. He’s described as a “weird kid.” He randomly sings or talks aloud without realizing it, and spouts out inane facts in conversation, like that dolphins can kill sharks with their noses.

Marcus misses a lot of social nuances. When Will offhandedly says, “see you soon” as a generic parting phrase, Marcus takes him literally, calling him up to ask when they’ll be hanging out next. Will tries to get out of it, but Marcus doesn’t take the hint.

“I’m super busy at the moment.”
“I thought you did nothing.”

When Will finally acquiesces, Marcus insists his mother come along and bluntly tells Will they’ll either have to go someplace cheap or Will has to pay. Will remarks on the bluntness and Marcus reiterates, “You’re rich, we’re poor, you’re paying.”

When Marcus invites himself over to watch television, he abruptly announces his departure and leaves once he’s had enough. It feels very scripted to me. Marcus offers a hand for Will to shake and says, “Thanks, see you.” Then just leaves before Will can reply. In another scene, Will holds up a hand and says “high five.” Marcus doesn’t react and just walks past him. When Will attempts to talk about his attraction to Rachel, Marcus interrupts him to talk about his own girl problems. He also doesn’t understand slang like “taking a piss.”

Marcus seems to get along better with adults than with kids, understanding them better. He does try with other kids, but his conversations come off as forced or odd. He’s bullied horribly at school. When he’s confronted with another bully at Rachel’s house, he leaves without even announcing his departure to the adults. To me this reads as both overwhelm and unconsciously breaking a social convention.

Fiona, in her “yeti costume”

One could argue that Marcus is nerdy and weird because of his mother, who is, in the words of Will, a “daft fucking hippie,” but most kids don’t look to their parents for how to fit in past a certain age. When Marcus tries to set his mother up with Will, he had a hand in making her look less than presentable: “At least she looked good. I made her put on that nice furry jumper, and those earrings she got from a friend who went to Zimbabwe.” Even though he’s socially ostracized, he doesn’t seem to understand that his own fashion sense is as bad as his mother’s.

There were no signs of sensory issues that I saw, but most accidental portrayals have them.

So what do you think? Is Marcus autistic?

The Importance of Identifying Autistic Characters

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Article inspired by this thread (screencaps below), among other things. I’ve been wanting to write something about this for a while. Nothing like a blog post to make you feel productive when you’re stuck on your second book.

In prepping for my book launch, I ordered proof copies of my paperback and distributed them to various friends and family to help with last-minute typo checks. Much to my chagrin, not one, but three people flipped to the back and read the author’s notes first (who does that?!). I purposely put it at the back because I wanted people to experience the story and characters without their preconceptions of autism.

Two of my family members disliked the author notes, saying they felt unnecessary and overly apologetic. One person said that by labeling the characters, I was constraining my creativity and preventing myself from being able to change them later.

I should mention that both of these people are cis white men. One of them is neurodiverse, but doesn’t really see it as a core part of his identity. They’ve grown up seeing themselves in every form of media.

I haven’t.

I grew up feeling distinctly at odds with the characters who were supposed to represent me on screen—girls who needed boys to save them, girls who were scared of snakes and lizards, girls who weren’t allowed to go on adventures. I idolized Peter Pan and hated Wendy. I’m not trans, but it certainly made me have a disconnect from my gender. To be female was to be without options.

As I got older, I sometimes glimpsed a character I identified with, but they were usually played for laughs, in a “can you believe how weird this person is?” kind of way. I occasionally saw myself in the nerd archetypes, but they were always male and typically misogynistic. Female nerds only existed to go through the dramatic makeover arc—ugly outcast to pretty princess.

There were no one characters who acted like me and were female and were accepted. And nothing was labeled. I didn’t know about autism or anxiety or sensory processing disorder or gender fluidity or any sexuality besides gay and straight. I was given labels of my own, though: weird, shy, quiet, rude, bossy, loud.

It’s a special kind of hell growing up different, knowing you’re different, but not knowing why. No one else seemed to be as sensitive to sound or touch or texture, so I just didn’t talk about it for fear of coming off even more weird. My family made accommodations because they loved and accepted me, but strangers made a point of pushing my buttons. I tried not to give them any more ammo.

I was in my mid-thirties before my son was diagnosed and I learned what autism really looked like. Before then I only knew about the condition peripherally. I knew someone with an autistic kid, but he was whisked away from playgroup after his diagnosis and put in intensive ABA therapy. I knew about it from a Bruce Willis movie, Mercury Rising, but only remembered one line (something like, “Autism, what’s that mean? Nothing gets through?” “No, it means everything gets through.”). I’d seen Rain Man, but didn’t know it was about autism and certainly didn’t recognize myself in the character.

It would have been nice to see characters like me presented in an authentic way and have them labeled as such. Seeing myself could have led to earlier diagnosis. Instead, I fumbled my way into adulthood feeling broken and masking who I was for fear that no one outside my family would put up with the real me. I now have the words to describe by own experiences and advocate for myself.

Representation matters. It helps us feel seen. It helps others see us.

This is normalization and acceptance.

Unfortunately, representation for invisible conditions sucks. I don’t want to diminish the experiences of other marginalized groups because we all get shafted, but at least when a BIPOC walks on screen it’s somewhat obvious (which is why whitewashing and racebending are hot button issues in the first place). Invisible conditions/disabilities/sexualities don’t get that. LGBTQA people have to guess, unless it’s explicitly shown on screen (and even then, they have to deal with queer baiting). Autistics usually have to headcanon characters and get backlash from neurotypicals when we do, because a character that “functional” can’t possibly be autistic, right?

So why do creators leave us hanging? There are three main reasons:

They don’t know that’s what they’re writing.

Writers often use real people as inspiration for characters. Since so many adults are still undiagnosed, particularly women and BIPOC, it’s entirely possible that they don’t know that what they’re seeing is autism. Other writers may be using character tropes like the manic pixie dream girl, the quirky nerd, or the weird kid, which are heavily coded autistic.

They know exactly what they’re writing, but worry about getting it wrong and making people angry.

So they just don’t label it at all, even though everybody knows. It’s a way to maintain plausible deniability and deflect blame. This is how you get characters like Sheldon Cooper.

This is a self-fulfilling prophesy. The less representation there is, the better that representation needs to be. So much hinges on that one character because it’s all people may see. This is the crux of Hari Kondabolu’s argument in The Problem with Apu. When all people know is Rain Man, that’s how they think autism is. More characters spreads out the burden, because accurate representation no longer hinges on just a few iterations.

They know exactly what they’re writing, but the studio/publisher doesn’t want them to state it.

Kathy Reichs based the character Bones off an Aspie she knew. She has openly admitted this in interviews (I think it was this podcast), but stated that the network didn’t want to put a label on the character, cause god forbid you make a successful, awesome character autistic. I mean, people might get the idea that it’s not a tragedy.

Call me masochistic, but these days when I see a character I identify with, the first thing I do is frantically google to see if it was done intentionally. We all want to be seen, and validation from the creator gives us that. I fist pumped when Robert Kirkman gave a definitive yes in the comics regarding Eugene Porter. I also chickened out asking Mark Lawrence if Nona was autistic, instead asking about a minor, more clearly coded character from another series, out of fear he’d ruin my headcanon. It sucks when you want to know, but also you kinda don’t, because what if the creator says something unintentionally insulting, like “My character is too smart/capable/functional/awesome to be autistic. They’re just quirky.”

I don’t want to put other autistics through that. I know how much effort it takes to ask and how vulnerable it makes you feel. My author notes might not matter to most people, but it matters to me and it matters to people like me. I also hope it helps people see us as more than the Hollywood caricatures they’re used to. Maybe they’ll recognize someone they know. Maybe they’ll see that autism, while it comes with certain challenges, isn’t the tragedy they’ve been led to believe.

Hell, maybe they’ll recognize themselves.

Accidentally Autistic: The Queen’s Gambit

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Welcome to the first installment of my new series, Accidentally Autistic, in which I discuss headcanoned autistic characters — characters not formally declared autistic by the creators, but heavily coded that way, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

(Minor spoilers)

The Queen’s Gambit is a Netflix series about a fictional chess prodigy in the 1960s. The main character is Beth Harmon, an orphan who spends her nights staring at the ceiling and imagining chess pieces moving on a giant board. I was immediately struck by how autistic she seemed, and watching further episodes only strengthened that perception. When I brought it up with a group of autistic women, everyone who’d seen the show had the same reaction. Autistic vibes all around.

But what makes Beth autistic?

It’s not any one thing, but a multitude of small things. Beth is intelligent, socially awkward, and often seemingly distant. She’s reserved and you get a sense that she’s evaluating her words before speaking. When she does speak off-the-cuff, it’s obvious she’s not saying what is expected of someone her age and gender. It would be easy to chalk up her behavior to the loss of her mother, but even there, she doesn’t react in a typical way. Standing beside the car crash which had just taken her mother’s life — a crash she herself survived — Beth’s non-reaction is striking. It’s clear to any autistic watching that she’s having a shutdown, which is an internalized version of a meltdown. “Sure, anyone would be upset in that situation,” you might say. Yes, but it doesn’t stop there.

Beth Harmon demonstrating the spectacular resting bitch face so many of us have.

When Beth arrives at the orphanage she initially sticks to the rules, taking her pills as prescribed instead of listening to a fellow orphan and saving the green pill for later. This may be due in part to the directions themselves, which aren’t exactly clear:

Beth: What are they?

Jolene: Vitamins.

Second girl, laughing: Magic vitamins.

Jolene: If I were you, I’d save the green ones till the nighttime. Otherwise they turn off right when you need them to turn on, if you know what I mean.

Clear as mud if you’re an autistic kid, and Beth is obviously puzzled. Should she take them or not? Are the girls playing a trick on her or trying to help her? Beth is often puzzled by the actions of others. Jolene, a fellow orphan, is the one to initiate a friendship with Beth, who doesn’t show any real interest in others. Beth is happy to be alone and doesn’t really seem to fit in, especially once she starts attending a typical high school. She spends her days and nights hyperfixating on chess. It’s all she thinks about and really all she wants to talk about. As is the case for many of us, it is only through her special interest that Beth starts to make friends on her own, though the male players are initially put off by her confidence and lack of social decorum. (Side note: It is incredibly refreshing to see the interactions between Beth and the other female player. When it’s obvious that Beth has never been to a tournament, the other girl patiently answers all her bluntly-asked questions. It would have been easy to make her snide over Beth’s delivery and I’m very happy they didn’t do that.)

When Beth’s chess skills win her notoriety, the previously dismissive girls at her high school make an attempt to include Beth in their circle. Beth attends one of their gatherings. She tries her best to fit in, picking an outfit she thinks will impress the girls, a black formal dress. The other girls sit together on one big couch, in more casual, somewhat-matching outfits. Beth sits alone on a stool, posture rigid, hands clasped. They ask her about boys. Beth doesn’t understand the purpose of the question and then misses an innuendo about “trading Rooks.” When the girls turn on the television and start singing along, Beth stares at them like she just walked into a musical and flees the party.

Still got it!

Beth cares deeply about her adoptive mother, though she doesn’t demonstrate this emotively. Her care is shown in small gestures—cautioning her about drinking too much and joining her to watch a show. Initially I was concerned this would turn into a predatory relationship, but Mrs. Wheatley shows real affection for Beth. Once she truly understands Beth’s passion for chess, she listens to Beth infodump and watches her games to show support, even though she can’t follow all the moves. When a reporter starts asking Beth inappropriate questions, Mrs. Wheatley promptly hustles her out.

Episode five contains very striking examples of what it’s like to navigate romantic relationships as an autistic woman. An old colleague, Harry, takes an interest in Beth and offers to help her practice. He’s been following her career and has gone to great lengths to make himself more attractive, fixing his teeth, but Beth doesn’t seem to notice or send any of the usual cues of someone who’s interested. She’s not gushy or romantic. When Harry becomes discouraged decides to move on, Beth logically suggests he move in with her.

The first time Harry kisses Beth she’s momentarily stunned. He interprets this as a lack of interest. Beth quickly corrects him, clarifying that she simply wasn’t ready, but that she is now. Being mentally prepared for physical contact is totally in autistic thing, as we have a lot of sensory issues and a strong need for knowing what to expect (after a decade of marriage, my spouse has learned to verbally ask permission before initiating a hug). Post-coitus, Beth sits up and immediately starts reading. Harry tries to engage Beth in conversation, and while she does talk, her focus is on the book, leaving Harry confused and feeling dismissed. He can’t see that Beth is happy with the relationship and enjoys his company, that her reading the book means she’s comfortable enough to be herself around him. Harry’s not getting the emotional connection he wants and so he leaves.

Beth is an exceptional example of how to write autism well. It’s not the focus of her story, but you clearly see how it impacts her relationships. I doubt the writers had autism in mind when they wrote Beth, but she’s so strongly coded that autistics can identify with her.

© Val Neil All right reserved. Images belong to Netflix.

Adult Autism Diagnosis

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I have some traits of (strikethrough) There's a chance I'm (strikethrough) It's highly probable I'm (strikethrough) I'm pretty sure I'm (strikethrough) I am Autistic

I got my formal diagnosis today. It’s hard to quantify how much this means to me. 2020 has been an incredibly stressful year. My mental health has been shit and my writing has slowed to a crawl. On top of that, my lack of a formal diagnosis has been a constant source of anxiety. I’m an autistic author writing autistic characters. While self-diagnosis is widely accepted within the #ActuallyAutistic community, anyone outside that sphere would find it laughable. I know I don’t owe anyone my diagnosis, but when you have a self-diagnosis it’s tempting to caveat everything with “I maybe kinda possibly think” to avoid feeling like lying. I’ve avoided doing that on my author platform, living in fear of the day someone might ask me directly, and me responding with the truth, knowing how that would be perceived.

I mostly avoided formal diagnosis because I was afraid of unforeseen future discrimination. I still am. This stuff can be used against us in things like custody battles. While my spouse would never do that, you never know what the future holds, especially when one lives in a country with a president who openly mocks disabled people. I’m still scared of having a formal record of my diagnosis.

But there’s another reason I avoided professional diagnosis- imposter syndrome. Many of us have co-morbid anxiety (I do) and this leads us down the path of self-doubt, no matter how many times we stack up our traits against the DSM. So what if I sent my psychologist thirteen single-spaced pages of how I met the criteria? What if I was deluding myself? What if I had more friends than I thought? What if I wasn’t outwardly autistic enough for the examiner to see? I had to find someone experienced in diagnosing adult women. Otherwise if I didn’t get a diagnosis I’d always wonder if it was a failing on the part of the examiner.

So I searched. Not a lot of people in my area diagnosed adults, let alone specialized in women. Then I got a lead from a friend—the clinic that diagnosed her daughter specialized in girls and women. They were quite a drive, but doable.

The cost? $5500.

It’s a special kind of hell having to pay thousands of dollars to subject oneself to grueling examination by a professional just to have one’s identity validated. I couldn’t justify the cost so I didn’t move forward. That was a couple years ago (they’re now $6300). I searched again and found a clinic for $2500. Still a lot, and they didn’t specialize in women.

At this point I really wanted a formal diagnosis. If I went with the $2500 place and didn’t get it, I would second guess the results forever. But $6300 is so much god damned money. I could get so many books edited for that. I took a chance and went with the cheaper place. They did mention women on their website, and despite my trepidation when I emailed them, the psychologist seemed decent. (Having been through the whole process now, I can say that she’s good with autistics—great at priming what to expect and you can set up everything by email instead of having to call, THANK FUCK.)

I was initially quite worried, especially since I didn’t know how many of my traits were evident in childhood. That’s pivotal to an autism diagnosis—it can’t be something that shows up in adulthood. This can make it hard to get a diagnosis if you don’t have any living parents/caregivers able/willing to give an accurate history. The psych told me a lot of parents don’t remember enough. I spoke to my mom after scheduling the diagnostic process, not before, so I had no idea how much she recalled of my sensory issues or anything else.

Turns out I needn’t have worried. Learned some new things about myself, like how people thought I was hard of hearing, though my dad liked to point out, “How can she be HOH when she’s so sensitive to noises?” Indeed. After talking to my mother, I was a lot more confident I’d get a diagnosis and stopped stressing over the impending results.

It was nice going into my final appointment today for the results and being more mentally prepared. I’d originally anticipated much crying, but I’d had a week to adjust so I wasn’t an emotional wreck. I feel validated and seen.

I want to end this by saying that self-diagnosis is valid. It’s not like I was any less autistic before my formal diagnosis. There are a lot of barriers to diagnosis. I was very privileged to be able to afford mine. Not can afford it, and that’s assuming they can even find a doctor to take them seriously. Women in particular are extremely likely to be misdiagnosed with things like Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). BIPOC are still underdiagnosed.