Writing a Book Through Ill Health

We all face a bout of sickness in our lifetime at some point. But what if this hits as we are writing a book?

“I was literally in the middle of a three-month sabbatical to write my book when I was diagnosed with Lupus. Plagued with fatigue and nausea, as well as insomnia, I had no idea how I was going to finish what I had started,” says Pam, a self-published author from London, UK. “And I had a deadline of less than two months. After that, I’d have to go back to work.”

Cathy had planned her time off a stressful job after years of wanting to complete her novel. And now, it seemed she would never get it done.

Eli, a writer from Los Angeles, wrote his book while on dialysis. Three times a day, he’d have to pull himself over to a medical area in his study and attach a bag of saline to his abdomen, a process he found exhausting and physically painful. “I was really in no fit state to do anything, let alone write a book. It was totally unfair this had happened at the same time in my life. I was only a young guy, and I have many books to write yet. But all my time was taken up with travelling to doctors and hospitals, and having blood tests.”

So how do we cope with the incredible stress of writing a book when we have illness to deal with? Cathy found support in the book world helped. “Hiring a professional developmental editor that would talk to me about my plot points with me and encourage me to complete chunks of my writing really helped. When I feel glum I write him an email, and he has tips for me to carry on.”

She found the most important tip was consistency. “I found writing every day, even if it was only two hundred and fifty words and they weren’t very good, kept me in the realm of my story, and present with my characters. That would give me a first draft in one year.”

Although Cathy has not completed her novel yet, she is now on her second draft. “By having a plan, and setting myself bite-size deadlines, such as “three chapters done by next month”, my editor ensured I have a product with structure and pages of writing! Of course, that needs honing, but the hard graft is for the most part complete.”

Eli found that bad health gave him a reason to write. “I was facing a mortal sort of crisis: I could die from my organs shutting down. I could die really young if a donor organ was not found in time. That really put a fire under me. Was I really going to die without completing the book I wanted to write? My wife would say to me, “If you’re on your deathbed and you haven’t completed this thing, you’ll be haunting me after!” Which sounds really grim, but you develop gallows humor with these things.”

Writing drove him to focus on the better things in his life. “Being trapped in a room for months attached to tubes meant I needed an escape. That’s what writing did for me. I felt valuable, creative.” Once his book was published, he also got a lot of compliments on social media that inspired him to keep well. “It’s meant I can feel like I achieved something, and that’s helped a lot with my health. Mind over matter is important for the body.”

There’s no doubt that writing a book is incredibly time-consuming and energy-zapping. By allowing yourself a little love, and a little faith in yourself can go a long way. Author Ruth Hogan was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012. When chemo kept her up all night, she started her novel, The Keeper of Lost Things, which went on to being an award-winning, beloved book. Her new novel discusses chemotherapy.

Illness can also touch carers and partners who write. Karl Ove Knausgaard, the biographical phenomenon from Norway, wrote extensively about his marriage to Linda, an artist and filmmaker who had a severely disturbing nervous breakdown while he was trying to write his books, his career taking off while she was struggling with every aspect of life.

This horribly black mundanity turned out to be the meat of his book, The End, as he relates in an interview. “And I remember thinking: how is it possible to have three beautiful children, to be doing the one thing I had always wanted to do, getting my books published, and yet still not be appreciating life? That was the starting point.” Knausgaard is now widely accepted as one of the best authors of our time.

Bauby wrote his book with blinks while having Locked In Syndrome

There are many famous writers who wrote while chronically sick. Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, and Virginia Woolf were suicidally depressed for years (and killed themselves), while Stephen King, Charles Bukowski, and Michel Houellebecq (to name only three) wrote through extreme substance addiction, producing, arguably, their best work (Can we imagine a world without Misery?).

Charlotte Brontë suffered with serious menstrual issues, dying later from severe morning sickness, while Emily Brontë had a pestering consumption that ultimately killed her. George Orwell had chronic tuberculosis, pneumonia, and survived being shot in the neck, while Iris Murdoch famously lost her creativity to Alzheimer’s, as did Terry Pratchett. Dickens had asthma, along with Proust.

And Henry James was severely constipated — not a small malady, if you’ve ever had it. Should we need further inspiration, Jean Dominique Bauby wrote his bestseller, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, after a huge stroke that left him with Locked In Syndrome in his forties. He wrote the whole book by blinking one eye, the only part of him left that moved, over 200,000 times.

By taking stock of what we are writing, and why we are doing so, we can uncover methods to deal with what we can’t do, and celebrate what we can. Knowing many writers have gone before us with a multitude of health issues can inspire us to carry on putting words to the page.