A Speccy Man Has A Breakdown - day 124

<< Previously

I’ve known Tim Lott for a number of years. When A Speccy Man Has a Breakdown was ready to share, I asked if he’d like to see a copy. He read it, gave me a generous quote, and suggested we meet for coffee. And we did, on Friday morning, at a cafe opposite Kensal Rise overground station.

Tim is one of the most candid writers about male depression there is, and he opened the conversation by asking how I’m doing at the moment. So we talked about that for a while.

We talked about medication. My own view is that it may have made me feel worse – not only for chemical reasons, but also because of what it meant to self-identify as A Person On Medication, ie, defective.

We talked about rock bottom. I’m sceptical of the consolation people attach to it. You can never really say you’ve reached it, because (sorry to say this) things can always get worse.

But there can be relief in genuine acceptance – ceasing to struggle against how things are. That’s not giving up. It’s more like putting down something heavy you didn’t realise you were still carrying.

Publishing has changed across both our careers. We’ve both done a lot of teaching and mentoring too, and that shapes how you think about writing – not just as something you do alone, but as something you can help others find their way into.

I found myself getting quite animated about how I actually put this book together – my decision to self-publish rather than write something and then wait weeks or months for someone I don’t know to decide if it was good or not.

And I got especially animated when I told Tim how important and valuable I found it to share my progress in emails to people who were interested. I mean: gold dust.

And it’s not like there were tons of readers. I started with a very small email list of about forty people who specifically opted in for those nearly daily emails. The list grew to around a hundred and fifty readers – and a large proportion of them went on to buy the book.

On balance, for obvious reasons, my conversation with Tim was quite serious. But not entirely.

Before we left, Tim mentioned George Orwell’s idea that there’s little difference between a writer and a baby crying for attention. And yes, we both laughed quite a lot about that.

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👉 If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to a crisis line in your country. In the UK, Samaritans are available any time on 116 123.

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