Writerly Issues With Manuscript

Two of the biggest concerns I have about my current querying manuscript after the fact of having finished and having edited it is its using

1) dreams as a narrative device and about its dealing with

2) the issue of mental illness and suicide.

First Things First and The More Concerning One First, So Mental Illness and Suicide

The premise of the idea for this manuscript is that if the mind is capable of Albert Einstein, Franz Liszt, Ludwig van Beethoven, William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoyevsky level of thought and creativity, it can be capable of so much more that we don’t know or have yet explored. Biology and anecdotal evidence have also shown that the human is the ultimate survivalist. My questions in writing this manuscript are to what length can the human mind go to survive trauma? Is survival merely grit? Isn’t it possible that some trauma is so severe that we weave for ourselves the most elaborate, creative, genius fiction to buffer our psyche against harm and further trauma? And, what then is that fiction?

I don’t want to write horror genre, but what are the real life possibilities for such trauma and survivalist reactions?

Yes, the narrative does explore suicide, because for the human being, what else is more self destructive and the most low point than self death? The road from a well adjusted, successful life and enjoying family and friendly companionship to the mire of their opposite is therefore psychology, religion, trauma, and the actions grown out of those impulses.​

That is so much fertile ground for narration, thought, and “what if” pondering in general.

However, I never wanted to make this manuscript a study in psychology. I wanted to explore the world itself, that fiction, for a character locked into that confine, that construct. I didn’t want to research too heavily the psychological and medical literature on the subject. I didn’t want the narrative to become clinical.

And yet, such a subject matter in commercial or upmarket literature will probably come with or should come with trigger warnings. Such warnings or a necessity for such warnings will scare off publishers and agents, I fear.

Because I never intended to write horror, the self harm is not gruesome but rather a springboard into phantasma and the magical realism genre I write.

Dreams As Problematic Narrative Vehicle

When I read this on Twitter that publishers and agents therefore stay away from dreams in narratives, I was a bit perplexed. I agree dreams can be disjointed to the waking narration that runs parallel. And, I don’t know that this is even the chief reason for the demure by the publishing industry. That’s my guess though.

I’ve searched YouTube, the internet, and Twitter, but I get no satisfactory answer or even one with a fleshed out answer of any kind. So, I’m still at the “why?” stage on this one. Maybe I’ll need to explore more on this in a later post.

Conclusions

I’m stuck though. Both are so inured into the narrative that they can’t be taken out. The suicide may be able to be replaced by a nervous break down, but whenever I’ve read of or heard someone had a nervous breakdown, I’ve always wondered what that exactly meant? What is a nervous breakdown. Saying the character had one or depicting it would be difficult if I myself don’t know what it is. Of course I could look it up, but suicide I’ve seen. As a teacher in high school, a student and a colleague have killed themselves. My brother-in-law has done so. Many people know it more familiarly than they do nervous breakdown, I feel. Ugh!