Control: The 77-day novel
I, Dalton Lewis, spent 77 days on my novel We the Gamers. I know — it turns out to not be the only book with that title — sorry. The truth is that you should try to read this book because it reflects reality and real-world mental illnesses in a dark and honest manner. If you want to learn about the worst sort of psychiatric problems people can have, read this book.
Normally I had been spending six weeks on a novel. I didn’t do that this time. I spent longer on this one — went further towards making it a polished novel. I did two slow and careful drafts and then spent several days doing a polish and edit. I wrote it until I read it and said to myself, this is done.
This one’s based on reality. My struggle with schizophrenia led me to this novel. I woke up one day and looked at my life and how I had gotten here. I looked at my life’s decisions. I stopped and realized:
I had been screaming inside at voices inside of my head.
I hadn’t been paying attention to the world around me.
I had gained one hundred twenty pounds over twenty years.
I hadn’t thought about my strategy gaming at all — no plans for my war games, just playing without any tactics.
I just lived on autopilot — no thoughts or plans for actions in the real world. I didn’t care one bit about reality, just the world inside of my head.
I noticed that my friends also had mental health problems, too.
Phillip had OCD.
Phillip had problems. He washed his hands several times an evening — repeatedly had a compulsion to do it. He repeatedly picked something up and put it down again, just not able to pick it up and hold it. He had some mental compulsion preventing him from just picking it up.
Terry didn’t admit to PTSD, but I sensed it in every veteran, and I wanted to write about it, so I invented a fictional character kind of like him with PTSD and ran with it. I wanted a family man with problems with his children and his marriage and his job. I wanted to show how a veteran can have trouble keeping everything together in the real world after serving the country.
Finnegan, one of my oldest friends, had ADHD. He had trouble focusing on anything for any length of time. He was smart but had trouble paying attention to tasks. I also wanted to show the general malaise that a normal person with a family and a nine-to-five job could feel. I thought that this was a problem familiar to many Americans and therefore something that I could express in this book.
I worked really hard at this book. I work really hard on all the books. They don’t make money — not yet. I haven’t started to make a profit yet. I’m still working towards that. I want, really want, to start to make a profit on the novels. That would require a lot of sales — a lot more sales than I already have. Still, I think I deserve it. I work really hard at writing novels that entertain people and are based on something that reflects what’s wrong with reality. Let’s see if it happens.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
