benaspiringwriter
Member
Hi there,
This is my first contribution to this already expansive but accessible seeming website. My name's Ben, I'm 35, currently living in Sheffield, England. I have dyspraxia and Asperger’s syndrome. Like many of you it already seems, I love reading and writing, listening to and playing music, art, and so on. However sometimes my confidence in my creative abilities diminishes whenever I am consuming the work of a genius, say S. Bellow in literature, or S. Prokofiev in music, and so on, because I often feel that I can't write, etc, like my heroes. Recently I've even been contemplating ‘accepting myself’, and focusing on being more a consumer of culture than a producer of it.
And yet, a dream I've had since I was 20, of becoming a published writer of some sort, has not entirely died. Indeed, on the one hand, the dyspraxia part of my diagnosis illuminates for me in an inspiring fashion that great literary figures of the past were all dyspraxics. Some of you may have also heard the cyberspace gossip that Samuel Johnson, S. T. Coleridge, the Bronte sisters, G. K. Chesterton, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell and Jack Kerouac were all dyspraxic, that is, on the autistic spectrum. But this is not all, for, on the other, hand, during that great 2015 book on autism, Steve Silberman's Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and how to think smarter about people who think differently , he quotes Hans Asperger as saying "the hope of finding a comrade like themselves’ (sic).
Taken together, in my own context, but maybe in some of yours too, the dream of becoming a published writer is still just about on the cards, however, in my own experience, various attempts have demonstrated to me that, without a serious collaborator, I will never be able to finish a whole book and get it published. Now, on the one hand, in terms of elsewhere in the history of books, Martin Amis, during his breakthrough 1973 novel The Rachel Papers argues that the writerly compositional process can in one sense be procedurally boiled down to ‘first you free-associate, then you spot the jigsaw, then you put the jigsaw together’; and, on the other hand, Cathy Newman, presenter on Channel four news, has more recently contributed a particular thesis to the discourse entitled Bloody Brilliant People; The Couple and Partnerships that History forgot. In one words, as this post perhaps demonstrates, I am okay when it comes to free associating, but when it comes to the intense organisational and structuring sides of writing, I have become convinced that I desperately need a serious collaborator. Perhaps, then, Asperger’s ‘comrade’ could become a latest version of Newman’s ‘partnership’?! Please let me know if this sounds like a project you’d like to partake in! However, naturally, perhaps I should enjoy getting to know many of you people first.
Lastly, I apologise if this first contribution of mine seems a bit pompous. Asperger's syndrome people like many of us are often criticised for ‘speaking in flowery language’ (Neurotribes, and, obviously but importantly, elsewhere). Please know that I both enjoy ‘low brow’ culture, as well as enjoying non phoney self deprecation. I suppose one of my maxims would be ‘an audacious but humble ambition’. Maybe this is true of some you people, too? At any rate, I look forward to cyber dialogues with some of you soon. And, who knows, maybe some of us could—in the fullness of time—pull off the miracle of publishing something together?!
Speak soon hopefully,
Ben
This is my first contribution to this already expansive but accessible seeming website. My name's Ben, I'm 35, currently living in Sheffield, England. I have dyspraxia and Asperger’s syndrome. Like many of you it already seems, I love reading and writing, listening to and playing music, art, and so on. However sometimes my confidence in my creative abilities diminishes whenever I am consuming the work of a genius, say S. Bellow in literature, or S. Prokofiev in music, and so on, because I often feel that I can't write, etc, like my heroes. Recently I've even been contemplating ‘accepting myself’, and focusing on being more a consumer of culture than a producer of it.
And yet, a dream I've had since I was 20, of becoming a published writer of some sort, has not entirely died. Indeed, on the one hand, the dyspraxia part of my diagnosis illuminates for me in an inspiring fashion that great literary figures of the past were all dyspraxics. Some of you may have also heard the cyberspace gossip that Samuel Johnson, S. T. Coleridge, the Bronte sisters, G. K. Chesterton, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell and Jack Kerouac were all dyspraxic, that is, on the autistic spectrum. But this is not all, for, on the other, hand, during that great 2015 book on autism, Steve Silberman's Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and how to think smarter about people who think differently , he quotes Hans Asperger as saying "the hope of finding a comrade like themselves’ (sic).
Taken together, in my own context, but maybe in some of yours too, the dream of becoming a published writer is still just about on the cards, however, in my own experience, various attempts have demonstrated to me that, without a serious collaborator, I will never be able to finish a whole book and get it published. Now, on the one hand, in terms of elsewhere in the history of books, Martin Amis, during his breakthrough 1973 novel The Rachel Papers argues that the writerly compositional process can in one sense be procedurally boiled down to ‘first you free-associate, then you spot the jigsaw, then you put the jigsaw together’; and, on the other hand, Cathy Newman, presenter on Channel four news, has more recently contributed a particular thesis to the discourse entitled Bloody Brilliant People; The Couple and Partnerships that History forgot. In one words, as this post perhaps demonstrates, I am okay when it comes to free associating, but when it comes to the intense organisational and structuring sides of writing, I have become convinced that I desperately need a serious collaborator. Perhaps, then, Asperger’s ‘comrade’ could become a latest version of Newman’s ‘partnership’?! Please let me know if this sounds like a project you’d like to partake in! However, naturally, perhaps I should enjoy getting to know many of you people first.
Lastly, I apologise if this first contribution of mine seems a bit pompous. Asperger's syndrome people like many of us are often criticised for ‘speaking in flowery language’ (Neurotribes, and, obviously but importantly, elsewhere). Please know that I both enjoy ‘low brow’ culture, as well as enjoying non phoney self deprecation. I suppose one of my maxims would be ‘an audacious but humble ambition’. Maybe this is true of some you people, too? At any rate, I look forward to cyber dialogues with some of you soon. And, who knows, maybe some of us could—in the fullness of time—pull off the miracle of publishing something together?!
Speak soon hopefully,
Ben