“Maybe the most important step was not too long ago when I admitted I had to actually study writing more, especially novel writing, because writing a good novel is about so much more than just writing well.”

December 21, 2008

Maija Haavisto/*diamondie is a writer, journalist and patient activist. Her book, Reviving the Broken Marionette, details a comprehensive list of medications that can be used to treat CFS/ME and fibromyalgia. I encourage you to read some of her news articles -- they are both educational and inspiring.

Maija has been on deviantART since March 2003, and has contributed in many ways to the literature and other galleries. She is also an excellent critic, and in February, she judged my critique contest along with `SparrowSong.

In this interview, she describes her career as a professional writer and her aspirations for the future. This should be very helpful for anyone who wants to write for a living, and the more you get to know Maija, the more amazed you are by her.



^lovetodeviate When did you start writing? How have you grown as a writer?

MH: I started writing at the age of five. It's hard to describe "how I've grown", because it's pretty obvious every aspect of my writing has improved in the past 19 years. At least I certainly hope so. Maybe the most important step was not too long ago when I admitted I had to actually study writing more, especially novel writing, because writing a good novel is about so much more than just writing well. I'm the kind of a person who doesn't like reading "tutorials", I prefer the trial and error route, but sometimes it's better to learn from other people's mistakes, too.

Special guest question: Do you consider writing your career? If so, what is your typical workday like? Is it difficult to write as a career? And if not, what do you do in addition to writing? -- *cloudtographer

MH: Writing has been my career since I was 16, but I'm ashamed to say the career was doing much better then. Back at the time I could make as much money in an hour as I now make most months with low-paying freelance writing and translation gigs and my three books. Hopefully that will change soon.

My typical workday... well, I cannot work nearly every day. On average it's 5-15 hours a week depending on how much work I have and how I'm feeling, though it's very hard to count because you could count all medical reading as part of my work, and I do loads of it. For a writer even reading novels or magazines or surfing the web could be work. In general working as a writer is much more than just writing - I send a lot of email, read job alerts, apply to jobs, listen to CDs to review, ask for review copies of books, try out foods from cookbooks... It's more like a lifestyle.

I always work from home, I don't go out to coffee shops to write or anything. Couldn't afford it and not sure if I could even focus. I don't have set hours for working. Sometimes I'm up at 8 AM and start writing immediately, sometimes my brain doesn't even wake up until 9 PM (or at all). It's very irregular. I wish I could pull all-nighters, but I can rarely work much longer than an hour at once.

Writing isn't any more difficult or easy than any other career, if you have the knack for it. The competition is fierce these days, though, as everyone and their mother seems to be getting into freelance writing. It doesn't help to scream "Hey, I wanted to be a writer long before it was trendy!" It's very difficult to try to envision how successful my career would be had I not been ill, as I've been ill throughout the eight years.

Besides writing I do many other things, but almost all tie into writing in some way. I love food and cooking and I also write about cooking and review cookbooks. I write for a music magazine too. I am a photographer and hope to make more money with that in the future, taking photos for the articles I write. I love traveling and I'd love to work as a travel writer/photographer, but it's not very easy when you're disabled.

Special guest question: Did you go to university or receive high education centred on writing? -- *cloudtographer

MH: I have not even finished high school (I had a few courses in creative writing in both junior high and senior high). I got ill with CFS/ME when I was just 16. I probably would not have gone to university anyway. I always got top marks in school and I love learning, but I absolutely loathe "organized" studying (i.e. school). It's hard to explain, but that's how it is.

LTD: How important to do think a degree is for a writer, technical or otherwise?

MH: When I was a tech writer for six years, no one ever asked for my qualifications, not even when I answered people's questions which sometimes involved personal communication. As I'm a medical writer, having a fancy two-letter abbreviation after my name would be very helpful in terms of getting things published.

Degrees in writing or literature would not have helped me any - the actual education probably would have, but not the degree. I cannot give much weight to degrees, which sounds just like effective denial, but you can learn just about everything on your own. Not performing surgery or things like that, obviously, but you can read the same books and get the same things out of them.

On the other hand, the writing market in Finland is ridiculously small. It is hard to write for foreign magazines for multiple reasons, and many publications and websites require that you are a native speaker. Having been born in the U.S. would have been much more useful for my career than any degree.



LTD: Can you tell us about your book, Reviving the Broken Marionette, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? I don’t think enough people know or understand this condition yet.

MH: I got sick with CFS/ME in August 2000. I was just 16, and it messed up my health in a matter of one day, even though I was not that ill initially. But as years went by I ended up in a very bad shape, knowing a wheelchair and perhaps a nursing home would be in my near future. Many people I know who have CFS/ME are extremely ill, to the point of not being able to do anything.

I fought back, managed to get the treatments I wanted, got mostly better and the book is testament to that, it's possible to get better, even if you have a progressive form of the illness as I did. The original working title was "Prescription of Hope" (which I found too cheesy in the end). Doctors tell people this illness isn't treatable, but that just isn't true. My book has 346 pages, 250 medications, over 1,000 references, proving there are so many things to try.

Trying to help other people is what keeps me going. I get so much people asking for my help via email, even a long time before the book, for a variety of illness and conditions. Of course I don't pretend to be a doctor, but sometimes I'm the only one who even tries to help them. It's heart-breaking, because many of the people cannot afford to see a doctor or their doctor just laughs at them, even though they're very ill. A few times it has become quite clear that the person is very seriously, perhaps even terminally ill. And of course I can't tell someone they're going to die, so I have to just tell them they really need see a doctor as soon as possible.

CFS/ME is a real bitch of an illness, because it affects every system in your body. It has nothing to do with "chronic fatigue", the original name "myalgic encephalomyelitis" (painful inflammation of the brain and spinal cord) is much more appropriate. You can get almost any symptom, and if you're unlucky it can even kill you. I have about 50 different symptoms and keep getting new ones even though my illness progression has otherwise been stabilized. It's like being in a constant lottery.

Being sick killed my writing for a long time. It wasn't so much the fatigue but the cognitive impairment. At times I felt too daft to even read a magazine. I could barely string words together coherently. Luckily I'm out of that hole thanks to medication, but I lost many years of practice. I was once a very talented 15-year old writer, now I'm a moderately good 24-year old one and puzzled about what happened.

Laura Hillenbrand, author of the best-selling novel Seabisquit, has CFS/ME. She wrote the book mostly lying in bed. I have never done that - usually when I've been bedbound I've felt way to weak to do anything and too brainfogged to think straight.

LTD: How did you go about trying to get the book published?

MH: I wrote a book proposal, which was awful. Non-fiction books generally aren't sold based on the manuscript but a book proposal, which is essentially a compilation of market research and the essentials of the book. I hate market research, so it wasn't that much fun. It took me several months learning about writing book proposals and writing the proposal and in the end I had almost 100 pages of text (a lot of it was double-spaced, but still).

The proposal was sent to about 35 publishers in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. I would have gone bankrupt with the printing and mailing costs, but luckily my dad took care of that at his workplace. The end result was that one publisher was interested, but they had stopped specializing in fibromyalgia books. Another publisher also displayed interest, but was too afraid of legal problems that might arise from a non-doctor writing a medical textbook - nevermind that the most popular CFS/ME treatment book was written by two laywomen.

So, in the end I had to go with the self-publishing route I had already gone with the Finnish version of the book. It doesn't have the glamour of being backed up by Random House, but I didn't write the book for fame, but to help people.



LTD: Reviving the Broken Marionette is a medical book, but you write fiction and poetry as well. How different is it writing in these different genres? Is it difficult to shift from one to the other?

MH: At least I'd like to think I write poetry. I can't even remember when I last wrote a poem that wasn't a haiku (not to imply that haiku is not as good as other forms of poetry, but it's very different from writing lyrical poetry). Medical writing has probably hindered my creative writing. If you spend several hours a day writing a complex book, you don't really feel like dabbling on a short story after that.

On the other hand, studying medicine has influenced my writing significantly. I have got more into science fiction. My NaNoWriMo novel was originally supposed to be a scifi novel, but in the end it had very little scifi influence - though plenty of medical influence, as the main character is a biochemist, an immortalist and works as a personal carer for two very ill women. I also have several poems about medical subjects (many more unfinished ones).

One thing that's easy about medicine is that you do not need inspiration for it. If you feel completely dull and out of ideas, you can still entertain yourself with medical papers or a medical textbook. For me creative writing requires a lot of inspiration.

LTD: In November you participated in National Novel Writing Month. What was the experience like?

MH: It was more difficult than I expected. I wrote my novel in Finnish and due to the structure of the language 50,000 words of Finnish equals up to 75,000 words of English. On the other hand I did not do much else in November, very little work and I had even frozen my freezer full of food so I didn't have to cook, so it should have been easier. I have no idea how some people manage to write 10,000 words a day.

At first it was a lot of fun, but after the first week or so it started feeling more like a chore, especially since I was more ill than the previous month. Of course I still enjoyed the characters living their lives, and occasionally living life as them, but it was often quite a drag to write. I'd often need five hours to get the word count up enough. I wouldn't do NaNo again in Finnish, at least not unless I was much healthier.

The ending of the project was a bit funny. As I was cranking up the last 100 words or so towards the goal, the letters started to look fuzzier and fuzzier on the screen. I tried to ignore it and pushed through. After finishing I realized that yes, it was in fact a migraine aura, which I would have immediately recognized a few years ago, but now I hadn't had one for probably a year or more. So, not long after I finished I was half-blind. It probably wasn't coincidence: relief of stress can trigger migraines. But I've never experienced it in such a concrete way.

Special guest question: What sort of writing do you enjoy reading? -- `GaioumonBatou

MH: That's like asking a music buff for their favorite band. I like everything that's good. When I was suffering with severe cognitive impairment I couldn't read much novels, mostly just textbooks and magazines, so it's great to be able to read novels again. too. I also like short stories, poetry (mostly free verse), fascinating textbooks about just about anything in the world, and of course medical stuff.

My favorite novelists are Douglas Coupland, Douglas Adams, Margaret Atwood and Erlend Loe. My favorite poets include Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath, Leif Färding, T.S. Eliot and A.W. Yrjänä. I must add that there are many amazingly talented Deviants who don't really pale in comparison to famous writers. I mostly read general fiction, sometimes slipstream and scifi.

LTD: What are your plans for the future? Can we expect more books from Maija Haavisto?

MH: I was planning to write more medical textbooks, but I'm not so sure about that any more. I developed a nasty, possibly life-threatening health issue (adrenal insufficiency) this summer and I am fairly sure it was the stress from Reviving the Broken Marionette, as adrenal insufficiency directly involves the production of the stress hormone cortisol. It is just too ironic - not to mention stupid - to write medical books in hopes of helping other people and ruining your own health in the process.

I am working on an English translation of a novel I originally wrote in 2002 and self-published in Finnish this month. It should be out next spring. I am also editing my NaNoWriMo novel and hoping to send it to Finnish publishers some time in thespring, as well. If I can't find a Finnish publisher I'll probably try small UK, Canadian and U.S. publishers. My friends joke that I am a self-publishing assembly line, but it would be nice to get a real publisher now. Having a novel published has been my biggest dream since I was five.

Thank you, Maija , for being part of my interview series! Good luck with all that you plan to do. Thanks also to *cloudtographer and `GaioumonBatou for contributing questions and being supportive.

Helpful links

diamondie’s deviantART gallery
brokenmarionettebook.com
Word Disability Day: LDN
CFS/ME/FM awareness day: Diamondie's book is out!

Up next

I haven’t yet contacted anyone to interview for January 2009. When I do, I will let you know and you can send in questions.

Meanwhile, I’d like to recap all the interviews I’ve done this year:

April (National Poetry Writing Month)

Interview with a rising poet, *TheObviousChild
Interview with a haijin, *Laurence55
Interview with a woman of many roles, ~Esin
Interview with a nature poet, ~paradoxicalshaman

Monthly Interviews

June 26, 2008: *SRSmith on writing, the future and more
July 20, 2008: *MSJames on haiku, art and artistry
August 29, 2008: `GeneratingHype on letters, editing and GDship
September 28, 2008: `SparrowSong on writing, critique and her passions
October 22, 2008: *wordworks on writing, RP-ing and ideal stories
November 22, 2008: `fllnthblnk on poetry, publishing and his magazine