In this episode of Autistic POV, I share 7 ways writing fiction has been helpful to me. Some of these benefits go all the way back to childhood. I discovered others as I wrote my upcoming vampire novel (Trancing Miranda). I wanted to share this info because I think that other autistic people might find this way of looking at storytelling helpful.
Having said that, please note—these are my own personal perks. Not all autistic writers will have the same experience and I would love to hear any differences that might pop up on your list!
Also, please note, these are interpersonal benefits that have nothing to do with building a business or making money.
Check out my blog at barbaragraver.substack.com. You can read the blog without signing up for the free subscription, but if you subscribe, you'll get articles and media via email PLUS updates on my vampire novel (including discounts and freebies)
If you like this content, please consider subscribing, liking, commenting or sharing—or all of the above!
And thank you for listening!!!
UPDATE: Regarding the blog name change. It seemed confusing to have the blog and podcast share a name, so I changed the blog name to Writing on the Spectrum!
Please Note: If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or through my site: AutisticPOV.com
And if you like this content please consider following the show!
EPISODE 7 TRANSCRIPT:
If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can see the full transcript for this episode at AutisticPOV.com
Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today we're going to be talking about my personal experience with fiction writing
0:33
and some of the benefits of fiction writing that I've encountered that I think would probably carry over to a lot of autistic people. And I wanted to do this now because I'm going to be publishing my first vampire novel hopefully this month. I kind of hoped I could get the book out there before I did the podcast.
0:55
It didn't turn out that way and that's okay. And I'll talk a little bit more about the book as we go. But I just want to go over fiction writing and why I think it's a good process for a lot of autistic people. I'm not saying everyone needs to write stories.
1:13
Certainly if you don't feel called to do it, you shouldn't feel that it's a necessary process. But for anyone who feels that call to tell a story and to live in their imagination and to share their experience through story. I strongly encourage you to do it and in this episode I'm going to try to give you
1:34
a couple reasons why I think it's beneficial for a lot of autistic people. So I do want to start with a couple of updates and the first is that I renamed my blog again. I was calling it Writing After Dark which was nice but kind of generic. So I've changed it to autistic POV, like the podcast.
1:58
And the reason I did that is because I really want to focus on the intersection between autism and creativity. And I will write other posts, certainly. I'll do a few book reviews. I'll do... Some straight stuff just about autism, just like I do here. But I do want that to be a theme with it.
2:20
I don't want it just to be another blog on Substack about writing. I want it to be more specific. So that's my first update. And I'll include a link for the blog in the description, certainly. And my second update has to do with the memoir that I talked about in our last episode.
2:41
And if you remember in the last episode, which was on nonfiction writing and memoir writing and sharing our story and various ways of sharing our story across various platforms, I talked about how I'd written this memoir and it had ended up really being more about spirituality. than it was about autism. And I didn't think that was appropriate.
3:04
And I still don't. I still don't think that's appropriate. But just sharing my autism story just didn't feel like enough to me. I think it's partially because of my identity as an autistic person. It's very difficult for me to divide my identity and from the things that interest me. And it's funny because I've been watching Elementary.
3:28
It's a show that's on Amazon Prime and I really like it. It's not perfect, but I like it. And there was one scene where Sherlock and Watson were talking and Watson was saying how she needed more. She needed her own life. She needed her own space. And she said, your whole life is what you do.
3:48
And I'm not like that. And that was a fact of the show. That's a fact of his character. He relates to people through what he does. And that's pretty much all he knows. And that's pretty much all I know, too. And so writing an autism story independent of a special interest was a big, big problem for me.
4:09
And I just realized suddenly I picked the wrong special interest. Spirituality is not as much a factor in my life now as it was. And I've talked about this before. I'll talk about it maybe more. But it's not the factor in my life that it once was. After I got my diagnosis, I kind of got my answer.
4:27
And I stopped looking for it outside myself the way I did before. So spirituality was not a good fit. And I thought, what is, like, what is my, really my essential special interest? And my essential special interest is writing and creativity. So I am going to do, I'm going to do the memoir,
4:49
but it's going to be about autism and writing from my perspective. It's not just going to be about my life is autistic or autism and spirituality or whatever. That's the focus. And I'll share life experience in it, obviously, but still, that's the theme. That's the focus. That's what I want to talk about. So that's back on.
5:08
I just wanted to share that with you guys. So as far as our topic goes, Autism and storytelling is a really fascinating intersection for me personally, and I want to share a little bit about my experience with that and some of the reasons why storytelling or fiction writing is, I feel,
5:31
a really good activity for a lot of autistic people, or at least why it's been a really good activity for me. And I know you hear a lot online about writing and building a platform and making money and all that stuff, but I'm not going to talk about any of that. That's not even on my list.
5:52
So if it's on yours, you're going to have to look for a more neurotypical kind of approach because that's not what I'm looking at here. I'm looking at how writing fiction can help us in our heart or in our soul. I mean, that's what's important to me.
6:07
So I came out with seven reasons that I feel writing fiction has helped me. May not resonate for you, but I'm going to share them. And the first one is it serves as a refuge or escape. And that was my experience in childhood. I mean, that essentially was my childhood.
6:27
I spent a lot of time lost in fantasy. I would draw. I would draw books. from my different fantasies. I would write short stories as I got older and illustrate them and bind them into books and really go the whole way with that.
6:46
And that was my way of kind of processing a world that was really pretty antagonistic to me. Another way that I have found writing fiction to be really, really helpful is that it provides a way I could connect with others. And this, again, goes all the way back to childhood.
7:08
When I was a kid, I grew up in the 60s and 70s. I mentioned this before. But we didn't have all the stuff kids have now. We had to kind of make up our own worlds. And that's one thing I was good at. I was good at crafting those scenarios. And that actually gave me a way...
7:23
to interact with other children, kind of like Sherlock interacts with people through his detective work. I was able to interact with other kids for a time. It didn't last forever through that. And I think if we write stories now, there's still that potential to connect with other people through our fiction. I mean, they may not understand,
7:45
like if we're writing about dark themes like I do, like my vampire story is dark. It's not... It's not super explicit, it's not super violent, but it is dark. And I think that... It's kind of a double-edged sword because there are going to be a lot of people who kind of freak
