NaNoWriMo 2019 and The Writing Barn

I'm thinking about it! NaNoWriMo was how I wrote TAKE THE REINS and several other books of mine. But I also owe Agent Josh edits on a tween horse book, sooo that really needs to happen soon!

It really feels good to be back in the swing of things. I had to take some time away from social media and the writing world, but I'm slowly immersing myself back in all bookish things and it feels great.

Oooh, also! I'm teaching two online writing classes via The Writing Barn starting in January 2020! The classes are HOW TO WRITE MG AND YA THAT SELLS and PUBLICITY AND MARKETING: ALL THE TIPS YOU NEED TO SELL 1.5 MILLION BOOKS. Anyone can sign up, but space is limited!

I hope everyone's fall is off to a great start! If you want to re-add me as a buddy (NaNo wiped the old forums), my new username is "jessicaburkhart."

Why I Stayed

(Warnings: mentions of addiction and suicide attempts.)

“Jessica Burkhart is an author of tween and teen books. She loves all things pink and sparkly.”

Those were constant lines in my author bio. Plastered on 1.5 million copies of my books. My readers sent me glittery gifts in the mail. Loved discussing Twilight and all the sequels with me. Knew that if something was pink and sparkly, I needed to know of its existence.

However, my private, personal bio read: “Jessica Burkhart is an author of tween and teen books. She loves all things pink and sparkly. She’s also dealing with depression and anxiety.”

But how do you tell that to the kids who idolize you and want to be you? That love and adore that version of Jessica Burkhart? The Jessica Burkhart who’s cheerful and sparkly?

I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell anyone. I was too afraid that if I did, I’d lose them and the career I put sixteen plus hour work days into would be gone. After all, I was living my dream—I had a Brooklyn apartment, a steady job that I loved and I was making it. No one would believe that I was depressed, would they?  I didn’t know what to do, so I began taking benzos. Then, I tore a tendon in my elbow from writing (Yes, seriously!) and started on painkillers.

By 2010—just a year after my debut novel came out—I was a full-blown addict. I thought of pills as pretty poison—they helped me feel “pretty” which meant feeling nothing. They were “poison” when they’d start to wear off.

The bottles said to take one fifth of what I took every six hours. I’d wait four hours if I was being especially good that day. Most days I’d go three and a half hours. But that makes a bottle of 150 pills run out really fast. So fast that my life revolved around where and when to get pills and when and how to take them.

It was all I could plan for in my life. I had it down to a science: always have one or two doctor appointments scheduled for every eight days max. I carried a notebook with me to every appointment that helped me keep track of what I’d told which doctor. I’d gone from crafting stories in fiction to creating lies for my own life to help me score. The notes filled an entire mini-notebook.

It took so much time to keep my stories straight. I had to make sure I didn’t go to the same doctor too often and I had to keep looking for different doctors and pain management clinics. It was exhausting and the fear of running out of pills was a constant. It happened a few times and the hallucinations, gut-wrenching vomiting, sweating and the other withdrawal symptoms I experienced were more than enough to keep me up at night worrying that one day, I wouldn’t be able to score. I was trapped in a loop that would keep me prisoner for almost seven years.

I needed help to get clean and I didn’t love myself enough to get that guidance. My life had become an ongoing cycle of pills. So many handfuls of pills a day. Pills crushed into fine power and put in my morning green tea. Sometimes, I was too lazy to even crush them, so I’d dump the full pills into tea, stir and wait for them to break down in the scalding water. That was just my dose of painkillers. Benzos were next. Rinse and repeat for lunch. And dinner. Snack time pills were chewed and swallowed.

Sometimes, I’d wake up a couple days later from a post-benzo and painkiller dose so heavy I shouldn’t have been alive.

Pills were fuel to my depression and anxiety. With pills, I didn’t have to feel. Which is why I thought I was happy for so long. Then, when all of that crashed around me, I took more and more drugs to “help” my feelings of sadness and loneliness. What I couldn’t see then was that without getting clean and dealing with my mental health struggles, I’d never be okay. I was going to die with my then one true love: pills.

It was only a matter of time. My parents had found me unconscious once and I knew I’d terrified them, but I wasn’t ready to get help. On one of the worst nights of my life, I walked in front of a car in my Brooklyn neighborhood. Somehow, the driver managed to swerve and avoided hitting me. He honked and screamed, though and when I finally crawled into bed sobbing later that night, I ended up looking at kittens on a local rescue’s Website. Why? I can’t remember.

Soon, I had two kittens in my tiny one-bedroom apartment. I loved them fiercely. Bliss, a grey and white tabby, had a hip fractured and I taught her to walk. Bella, my muted orange and white, was a one-eyed sweetheart. I bonded with both of them, but what Bella and I had was special. She was like a dog—she wanted to be with me everywhere and didn’t care if I was going on a trip on the subway or sitting on my porch—if she could be in my lap, she didn’t care.

And before I knew it, I realized that yes, I wouldn’t stay alive for myself. But for them? For Bella? For the pirate kitty who sat by or on me while I cried over hallucinated cockroaches and who watched me hurl lamps or books into walls when I just didn’t know what to do anymore, I could do this basic thing of staying alive. Both of my kittens became cats as they watched me exist with my addiction and mental health struggles. Then, one day, I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't just exist. 

I went to rehab for the painkillers and got counseling. Hours and hours of counseling. And, soon after that, I was able to start to tackle the things in my past that led to my depression and anxiety spirals.

A year later, I started working with another doctor to come off benzos. That was a bitch. I won’t even lie. I’d thought coming off painkillers was hard. It’s been over two years, though. I know with certainty that I’ll never touch pills again.

The longer I’m off drugs, too, the more things come back. From my personality to my memories. I’m feeling things again. Some feeling suck, they really do! But I’ve learned how to cope without taking a pill. I’m able to feel happiness, too, which I could feel before, but it was muted. Through a haze of drugs that felt as though there was a Plexiglas wall up between what I could feel and what I wanted to feel.

I lost Bliss, my tabby, at the end of 2017 to a freak heart condition. Bella passed away in April 2018 after a short battle with cancer. They were each only five years old. It never crossed my mind, though, to go back to pills even in the darkest months after Bella’s death. See, the vet said she’d had cancer for a while, but had kept her symptoms very well hidden. I will always believe she stuck around long enough to make sure I was good—that I was clean and able to live—before she finally showed me that she was sick. She’d taken care of me for long enough and she could finally go. And, because of her, I’m here to stay. I still have dark days and I fight with my anxiety on the daily. But I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to keep being honest and open about my struggles with mental health and addiction.

My readers have stuck by me since I’ve started talking about my mental health struggles. I wish I would have come forward with my stories earlier, but hey, I’m doing it now.

Speaking of now, my current bio reads: “Jessica Burkhart is an author of tween and teen books. She loves all things pink and sparkly. She’s passionate about speaking out about the importance of good mental health.”

Thank you so much to Eva Pohler for including me on this World Suicide Prevention Day campaign. Please check out the rest of the stories that will be posted over the next several days.

Happy book birthday to LIFE INSIDE MY MIND!

I'm sooo excited, guys! My first ever anthology is out! 

Here's a bit about it: 

Your favorite YA authors including Ellen Hopkins, Maureen Johnson, and more recount their own experiences with mental illness in this raw, real, and powerful collection of essays that explores everything from ADD to PTSD.

Have you ever felt like you just couldn’t get out of bed? Not the occasional morning, but every day? Do you find yourself listening to a voice in your head that says “you’re not good enough,” “not good looking enough,” “not thin enough,” or “not smart enough”? Have you ever found yourself unable to do homework or pay attention in class unless everything is “just so” on your desk? Everyone has had days like that, but what if you have them every day?

You’re not alone. Millions of people are going through similar things. However issues around mental health still tend to be treated as something shrouded in shame or discussed in whispers. It’s easier to have a broken bone—something tangible that can be “fixed”—than to have a mental illness, and easier to have a discussion about sex than it is to have one about mental health.

Life Inside My Head is an anthology of true-life events from writers of this generation, for this generation. These essays tackle everything from neurodiversity to addiction to OCD to PTSD and much more. The goals of this book range from providing home to those who are feeling alone, awareness to those who are witnessing a friend or family member struggle, and to open the floodgates to conversation.

Participating writers include E.K. Anderson, J.L. Armentrout, Cyn Balog, Amber Benson, Francesca Lia Block, Jessica Burkhart, Crissa Chappell, Sarah Fine, Kelly Fiore, Candace Ganger, Meghan Kelley Hall, Cynthia Hand, Ellen Hopkins, Maureen Johnson, Tara Kelly, Karen Mahoney, Melissa Marr, Kim McCreight, Hannah Moskowitz, Scott Neumyer, Lauren Oliver, Aprilynne Pike, Tom Pollack, Amy Reed, Cindy Rodriquez, Francisco Stork, Wendy Tolliver, Rob Wells, Dan Wells, Rachel Wilson, and Sara Zarr.

💚on Amazon
💚on Barnes & Noble
💚on Goodreads

It's received *three* starred reviews which is SUPER exciting! I hope you'll check it out and let me know what you think! 

Mental health during Camp NaNoWriMo

I saw this thread on the Camp NaNoWriMo forum and thought I'd share my response here. Campers were weighing in with their tips and tricks for maintaining good mental health during April's camp. 

What disorder(s) I have:

Generalized anxiety disorder and depression. 

My tips/tricks:

* Disney music! This always gets me in a good mood. Plus, often easy to listen to while writing. 

* Green tea. Another mood booster. 

* Essential oils. Mostly citrus for mood. Sometimes minty varieties for energy. 

* Pokemon Go. No one plays anymore right? Well, Team Instinct here and I do. :) It gets me out and walking. 

Website down for a bit

Just a quick note: my personal Website (JessicaBurkhart.com) is offline for some changes, but it'll be back up soon!

New year, new look

Helloooo, Harts! :)

Thought it was time for a blog overhaul. I'm still tweaking a few things, but this is a start! How's your January going so far?

I'm SUPER excited that it's the *NINE* year anniversary of TAKE THE REINS' publication date on January 27. I CANNOT BELIEVE IT WAS PUBBED IN 2009! 😱

What a journey so far. Wow. I'm just so, so grateful for all of my readers who have stuck by me this whole time. 💓💓💓

More to come, but! There's a giveaway over on my Insta. Go follow me and check it out (JessAshley87)

NaNoWriMo 2017!

Hi guys!

Happy Halloween month aka October! :)

I'm in the middle of revisions on a super fun tween project as well as revisions on an adult story. Plus, it's almost NaNoWriMo 2017 time! Who's participating this year? Cuz this girl is!

In honor of NaNo, I wanted to share my how to guide:

THE END: TOP 10 NANOWRIMO PREP TIPS FROM A PUBLISHED WRIMO

Check it out! It's full of all of the tips I've used over the years to win NaNo.

See you guys around the forums. Feel free to add me as a WriMo buddy I'm "jessicab_87"