The First 100 - On Writing, Depression, and Expression

Writer's Note: In this post I talk a lot about mental health, my personal issues, and how I use writing as a sort of coping mechanism. For clarity's sake, I must add that I also have a therapist and advocate for treatment both therapeutic and medicinal to help with these issues. You can't write your way out of ADHD, depression, or clinical anxiety. I believe it helps, but that's because it's a component of how I treat my mental health, not the sole solution I use. 

    I've always struggled with the mechanics of writing. Not with the medium or with creation as a whole to be clear. That ought to go without saying as someone who has gone to university for degrees in the field of History, has enjoyed creative writing in one way or another since they were a kid, and fully intends to find meaning and purpose in a life dedicated to the craft. 

    But whether it's due to my ADHD or simply the repetitive nature of the work, writing as a mechanical exercise is, like any mechanical craft, something that I and many writers struggle with. It would be easier to blame the veritable graveyard of outlines, opening lines, and character notes that comprises the creative writing folders of my google drive on my ADHD alone for sure. But, I do think exploring this difficulty is important. Especially given that this blog is the main way I connect with a lot of people I don't see that often or message over the internet; and to be frank, I have tended to neglect it for long periods until I think of something worth writing about (which usually devolves into an overly indulgent rant about philosophy and politics that an editor really ought to be allowed to proofread before publishing). 

    So, that's what I want this post to be. A brief look at what is it about writing that I struggle with despite loving it and what that means for the blog, myself, and the books I want to write. I think there is something worth analysing in being a self-described "over-writer" who never the less still struggles to actually write most of the time. If not for nothing, there may be some use in physically pulling my thoughts on writing, my process, and what that involves like hair from a drain purely for the purpose of observation and study. I publish these posts for everyone, but I write them for me, and this one especially so. 

    As an aside, if you enjoy these posts, please consider following the blog with the button to your left. It has taken truly an insane amount of time to create a follower button that is both useful and aesthetically pleasing. Followers get immediately notified when new posts come out, so please help the blog out and give it a click. 

    I suppose the first thing I should clarify is the blog name. I used to call it "Nick Gushue.Blog" but the generic nature of the name tended to leave it buried to the point of non-existence in search results. The problem with trying to come up with a new name for the blog when you tend to write with an overly large vocabulary is the names that come to mind are, for lack of a better word if there is one, pretentious. Words like "musings," "thoughts" and other cerebral words make it seem like I'm trying to write something that sounds more profound than it actually is. I thought about pulling on my interests and hobbies with things like "quest board" and other RPGisms but they felt far too niche given I wanted this to feel more like a place I could post my thoughts and opinions in an open, egalitarian format. So I went with "Avalon Dispatch." It's simple, hopefully memorable, and I think works for conveying the idea of a message from myself to you that doesn't make me sound like I'm trying to elevate myself above anyone. Let's just hope it has better success with the SEO than before. 

    At this point, it's just as important to explain why this post is called "The First 100" in the first place. The simple answer is that I've hit a milestone with a project I haven't talked to many people about. I'm writing a book. And this week it hit 100 pages at about 35,000 words. For reference, my first written draft of my thesis was 47 pages at about 12,000 words. To put it bluntly, writing my first draft was one of the hardest things I've ever done and it was merely a component of a larger year-long project. It was weeks of painstakingly arranging over 102 pages worth of secondary source quotes (which I don't have a word count on because I did not save a separate copy of just my notes arranged in a rough outline order for some ungodly reason) and hammering them into 47 pages of barely intelligible arguments to be refined over the next month. 

    All this to say, writing a long-form novel and writing a thesis are entirely different animals. Most obviously, I have no deadline for my book. No publisher looms over me to hand it over as soon as possible (which truly would be the dream at this point from what I understand about publishing right now) whereas I had three semesters to complete my work before I would need to apply for more. Naturally, there are self-imposed deadlines which I have put on myself for this book in the form of monthly writing goals, but those can always be adjusted. A year-long pressure cooker that drives you to madness trying to find primary sources on a subject based on a region that you very much do not live in (and would have to risk travel to the fascist US to access) is less forgiving. This leads you to inevitably—as the saying my Dad taught me goes—to "hate your tape," and simply wishing to be done with the project and to move on. 

    So, while there certainly is a connection and, importantly, a progression of my writing habits between the thesis and trying to write a book, I think it actually isn't as important as the connection and—much more clearly here—progression between this attempt at writing at that veritable graveyard of ideas I mentioned earlier. To the surprise of no one, I'm writing a fantasy novel. To the surprise of myself, I've managed to get past the hurdle of the first chapter and actually have to write a middle section of a book for the first time in my life. There aren't just ruins of novel ideas either. That google drive graveyard is full of everything from half-thought out outlines for stage plays, screenplays, and even a—and I'm not joking in the slightest—a three season "outline" for a show about con artists that had barely any characters, only a small premise for a synopsis that was a complete change over from an earlier premise about timelines converging on two cops being killed while on patrol causing them to merge and solve crimes across . It also had a collection of episode titles all pulled from when I googled "famous opening lines in books." It may shock you to learn I was 15 at the time. 

   So why now? Why am I able to write and commit to my writing now? Is it as simple as having the experience from my thesis? That would be the answer Occam suggests once I've shaven off the unlikely alternate solutions for sure. And he would be right if he did not have the perspective on the past year I have. He may have it if he noticed the subtitle of this essay. I don't feel any shame or anxiety in sharing that I have often struggled with my mental health for years, in particular anxiety, depression, and recently, grief. While I do believe I certainly struggled with depression and anxiety when I came up with those abandoned ideas as I struggle now, since graduation I have in particular had to deal with my own depression in a fully acute form. And why not? The Great Schedule is over so to speak. I am done with school until I decide to ever go for that highest of heights in a doctorate. Twenty years of my life was spent in education. Kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, undergraduate studies, and finally graduate studies. I grew up knowing there was something coming, always. Every year that passed was a link in a chain connected to what came before and to what came next. All of the work of my teenage years and my early twenties brought me to graduate studies and completing my first ever major research and writing project. I was contributing a weft to the weave of history. I was adding my name to a long list of Newfoundland historians. Not just students: Historians. I wrote and published over 40 pages or work on the field of history for Newfoundland and the Atlantic world. 

    And then I was done. 

    I got approval for my paper to be submitted August 19th, 2025 and received my degree on October 16th, 2025. Just like that, 20 years of work had culminated and ceased. My entire adult life was consumed by university from entrance applications to pinning the cap on a headband to prevent it slipping off. And now, every day adds a sliver to my life that exists outside of this. Slowly, more and more, my adult life will comprise of the time I did not study at university until eventually that time will be a small weft in my own life's weave. 

    Who wouldn't feel depression as they try to navigate that life filled with hours spent on Indeed, Career Beacon, LinkedIn, and the NL gov public careers page? When I was a kid in the 2010s, my understanding of unemployment was that it was filled with existential dread at dealing with constant interviews. When I talked about it with others as a student in the late 2010s and the early 2020s, that understanding shifted to include dealing with constant rejection letters. Now? You'd consider yourself lucky if you were important enough for employers to directly inform you that you've been selected out of the competition for employment. There's a quote by Mark Fisher, a philosopher I both admire and mourn, that feels apt here: "The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness." What Fisher means and elaborates on in Capitalist Realism is that although there are medical and chemical causes for these conditions (and indeed the fight to treat mental illnesses as legitimate medical issues in the organ known as the human brain is critical to improving advocacy and treatment for mental illnesses), the socio-economic conditions of your life have immense impact on your overall mental health even before considering access to treatment. While it is certainly true that a rich man will be able to have his depression, anxiety, and borderline personality disorder treated than a poor man; it is just as accurate if not more so that a rich man is unlikelier to develop these conditions or have them worsen than a poor man. 

    I'd go further while bringing this topic back to mental health and writing, and argue that these conditions cause a destructive cycle. The political reality we find ourselves in influences our mental health which in turn influences our reality. In the grand scheme of things, this is where the politics of defeatism and nihilism take hold. In the smallest, personal scale of things, it drains you of your will to create. At least it "could." 

    See, I think that while my depression and other mental health issues have certainly limited my ability to do a great many things a great many times; they also provide a solution. When you've done what you can for others via protest, advocacy, voting, and community organizing, it is also critical to find ways to advocate for yourself, to yourself. At the most personal level, you are your own liberator just as you are your own oppressor. I think the reason I've been able to write the first 100 pages of my first book isn't because I'm a better writer than I was before grad school, or because this book is a better idea, or because I have a considerable amount of free time now that I'm no longer in the education system. I think the reason is quite simply because now more than ever, writing is the solution to my own individual, psychological corner of reality I am capable of fixing.

    In a previous essay I wrote on political apathy and trying to commit to action, I quoted one of my favourite characters, Joshua Graham from the New Vegas add-on Honest Hearts. I think it's only appropriate in this essay on hope and the results of commitment to action that I do so again. Although he is referring to his belief in Christianity, I believe he is correct when he tells us that "in a world filled with misery and uncertainty, it is a great comfort to know that in the end, there is a light in the darkness" and "we all have doubts, the light of the mind alone cannot erase all uncertainty." 

    My writing will not "fix" the world or end the struggles of humanity. That would be an unbelievably arrogant ideal to strive towards. I do believe that, bit by bit, creation and expression can help the smallest corners of the world on which we individually stand before they connect to all 8 billion corners the rest of the world stands upon and shares. I think that once we recognize that our supposed "idiosyncrasies" are symptoms you'll find in everyone who's made the choice to engage in creative expression (which, really, is everyone on earth), we'll be able to turn our individual solutions into communal ones. 

    It might seem foolish to compare writing a fantasy novel or doing art purely for the personal joy of creation as a communal action taken against systemic power and violence if you accept that the system can only be engaged with on its terms and conditions. In a system that demands you "hustle" and put aside your creativity and personal goals for actions and projects in service of itself, what is the most basic form of resistance than to reject it? The reason I consider writing 100 pages of a first draft of a sword and sorcery novel important isn't just because I have overcome my own personal limits, anxieties, and neglect of creativity to do so; it is important to me because it represents 100 actions taken to create and nurture expression. Each of those pages are themselves composed of anywhere from 100 to 350 smaller actions taken to organize language into narrative. Each word, sentence, page, chapter, and eventually book is a step in creative expression that can be shared with others. 

    Each time someone shares art with me, I feel joy at being able to connect with them over their expression. And once you share in that joy over some cake and tea, laugh and cry over shared joys and shared sorrows, you will find you've taken the most important steps of all: making space for community for yourself and for others. Your community is built on creative expression, whether it's painted art, the written word, or shared jokes on your experience. Pursue creative expression for no one but yourself and share it with everyone else. 

    You might be surprised what you find along the way.