Mental - HyunSeungI.N.

Outro + Analysis

Hi all! Just like my other finished books (Split and Anti) I am making this "chapter" so I can analyze my own work, see if I wrote the book in the way I wanted to, see how I can improve myself as a writer, and provide a bit of information and clarifications on things that may not be clear in the book. I don't think many writers do this like I do, but I think it's something more people should do because it really does help me improve myself. Now, you don't have to read this if you aren't into this kind of stuff, you are obviously not required to read this, but I do have a thank you message at the end that you might want to read. Thank you all!

Reflection

Oh boy, this book was quite interesting to write. Kind of like Split, I decided to write this book because Kleptomania was another extremely stigmatized disorder, and I think more people should be more be educated on these kinds of things.

Many people think that Kleptomania is a fake disorder, and is just an excuse for people to steal things. While some people do indeed use this disorder as an excuse for their crime (which, by the way, is extremely morally wrong.), this disorder is just as valid as any other mental illness and that's where a lot of the stigma comes from.

Kleptomania is an impulse disorder, meaning that people who have it have impulses to steal things. They don't want to steal things on purpose, their brains are just wired to suddenly have random thoughts to take things. While I don't have Kleptomania myself, I understand it a bit as I have OCD. I hope I was able to depict it as accurately as possible.

The two other main disorders I wrote in this book (Schizophrenia and Anorexia) are also quite stigmatized, especially Schizophrenia. Schizophrenic people are mostly stereotyped as people that are insane, you know, those people that talk to themselves in the corner of the room wearing straitjackets in horror movies. While it is true that some Schizophrenic people are like that, there are many that aren't. These people are just ones that struggle to differentiate from fake and reality. If managed correctly, Schizophrenic people can lead almost normal lives.

Anorexia doesn't have as much stigma as Kleptomania and Schizophrenia, but it still has quite a bit. A lot of people think that Anorexia is a lifestyle choice and/or a trendy new diet. That is far from the truth and anyone who thinks like that: the door is over there, please leave. Anorexia is when a person has skewed views about their own body, doing drastic changes to their diet or exercise schedules in order to get their desired (still skewed) body. Anorexia is also mostly linked to low self-esteem or low self-confidence.

I also wanted to display the helpfulness and how beneficial it is to go to a psychiatric ward if you feel like you need help. I am well aware that the ward I wrote in the book was probably way on the positive, actually caring side of mental wards. A lot of mental wards actually have bad reputations and aren't well taken care of, so when searching for one, make sure you do your research, but know that while many are bad, there are some good ones.

This book in general was a bit hard to write. I know there were a few things that I wrote in this book that weren't exactly realistic (for example, the police scene/arrest scene at the beginning of the book) and as soon as I start actually editing my books, I'll be sure to try and fix it.

On the other side of the spectrum, the romance plot and getting better plot were actually kind of easy to write together as the two pretty much went hand in hand. All in all, writing this book was a great experience.

Writing Process

I'm actually not very sure if this book was necessarily written very well as a generalization. Other than the non-realism, I kind of think that this book was paced a bit awkwardly sometimes.

I did follow my outline almost perfectly though. I'm not sure how that happened since I ended up having about ten more chapters in my outline than in the actual book in Split and ten fewer chapters in my outline than in the actual book in Anti. This book ended up being exactly the same amount of chapters I had planned in my outline, somehow. I guess I paced my outline properly.