Hello everyone and welcome to another post!!!

It’s been a while since I’ve last posted and I would like to apologize for that. Work has been hectic lately and I’ve been so exhausted coming home, I immediately take a nap instead of doing something for myself like working out or writing.

No longer though.

Hopefully starting now, I’ll try to push through the after-work exhaustion and pursue my creative passions. After all, the only way to become better at something is to practice it.

Anyway, enough with the introduction. Today, I’m going to be talking about my self-published poetry book Manic Nights and Depression Days. I know what you’re thinking, “Poetry? You mean like Shakespeare? I can’t understand that!!!”

That’s not the type of poetry I write. My poems are easy to understand and comprehend (at least, I hope they are) and don’t require ultimate brainpower to figure out what the hell I’m talking about. Now, the words I decided to name my poems might require a quick Google search, but that’s about as complicated as my writing gets.

If you’re intrigued, keep reading to see excerpts of my poems and maybe a song or two. For now, let me talk about the behind the scenes of writing Manic Nights and Depression Days and give a more in-depth view of how the book came to be.

Are you ready? Let’s go!!!

My Background

First and foremost, I should probably the premise of the book for better understanding.

I have bipolar disorder with psychosis which means that I’m constantly going from one extreme (mania) to the other extreme (depression). For those that don’t know, mania is defined as “a psychological condition that causes a person to experience unreasonable euphoria, very intense moods, hyperactivity, and delusions“. Mania is already difficult to handle by itself; add psychosis into the mix and now you’ve got a disaster.

Psychosis is described as “a break from reality involving either hallucinations, delusions, or a combination of both“. For me, when I’m manic, I have delusion of grandeur (basically thinking that I’m the queen of the world and nobody can touch me because I’m so great), I rarely feel the need to sleep, and I have non-scary hallucinations that involve me seeing things move that are stationary, feeling something on my skin when there’s nothing there, and smelling things that no one else can smell.

It’s a wild ride, basically.

The depression extreme, on the other hand, is pretty much the exact opposite. Instead of thinking that I’m on top of the world, I feel like shit and the scum under people’s feet. I feel like the world would be better without me and think my friends can’t stand me. In this state, I sleep a ton and don’t want to leave the bed at all. As for psychosis, I feel like people are out to get me and think shadows are coming for me. I get the scary hallucinations such as people calling my name, feeling bugs crawling on me, and seeing people that aren’t actually there.

Another wild ride.

Sometimes I’m manic, other times I’m depressed; sometimes I’m both (yes, you can be both manic and depressed at the same time [it’s hell]), other times I’m neither.

That brings us to how I decided to divide the book based on the poems I wrote.

Book Sections

My book has three sections:

• Manic Nights and Days
• Depression Days and Nights
• Manic Nights and Depression Days

The first section, Manic Nights and Days, was written during moments of mania aka when I was manic. Anytime I felt that familiar buzz of mania creeping up or noticed it already had its grip on me, I pulled out my laptop and started writing, crafting stories told through poetry and songs based on my thoughts or how I was feeling.

The second section, Depression Days and Nights, was written during moments of depression. As you can imagine, it was incredibly hard to bring myself to write or do anything while depressed, but somehow, I managed to conjure up enough energy to write the poems and songs for my book. I tried to truly capture the essence of my beyond sad mood in those songs and poems so that when they were read, the reader would somewhat be able to feel the torment I was going through.

The third and last section, Manic Nights and Depression Days, was written while I was either both manic and depressed or neither and was simply baseline. When I initially set out to write the book, I was scared that I wouldn’t have enough poems for this section. After all, this was during a time period when I wasn’t properly medicated and was going from mania to depression and back weekly, sometimes daily. Thankfully, I was able to get on the right dosage of medication and the poems and songs for this section started to come through.

Oh!!!

I almost completely forgot a special detail about these sections!!!

Each section was not only written during my different stages of bipolar disorder; they also have different fonts and alignments for the text.

Manic Nights and Days was written left-aligned, Depression Days and Nights was written center-aligned, and Manic Nights and Depression Days was written right-aligned.

It’s to represent the change of each stage and to give each section its own unique feel and texture so readers can really get into the proper mood of the text. At first, I wasn’t going to do this and keep everything more “professional” by following the standard pattern of poetry everyone else was following.

But I’m not a follower. And I like being unique and having my own mark on my writing.

So I followed through on the idea and it’s probably one of the best ideas I’ve had when it comes to my writing.

I’m so happy with how the finished product came out and couldn’t be happier with finally having a book I’m proud to call mine.

Now, let me show excerpts of my book.

Excerpts of Manic Nights and Depression Days

Ignore the little Lemon8 sticker in the corner of most of these pics. Unless you wanna follow me on the app and I would much prefer you to follow me on my socials (as soon as I get that situated).

Please let me know if you would like to see some of the songs I’ve written for the book and I’ll make another post with just songs.

Manic Nights and Depression Days if available on Amazon for $19.99 at this link: Amazon.com: Manic Nights and Depression Days: 9798989633005: Wright, Moon: Books

That’s all for this post. I wanted to give you guys a break from the language lessons and grammar as I know that can be overwhelming (and I was bit tired of using my brain to explain the different languages I’m learning. I would be a terrible teacher).

Thanks for tuning into this post and tune into the conclusion of the Attempt at being a linguist series coming soon!!!