Interview: Kathryn Vercillo

Kathryn Vercillo is a writer working at the intersection of art and mental health. She examines art as therapy and the myriad ways that mental health symptoms impact artistic content, process, medium, and productivity. She is the author of eight books, including The Artist’s Mind: The Creative Lives and Mental Health of Famous Artists and Crochet Saved My Life. Kathryn lives in San Francisco. 

Tell us about the challenges that impact your writing.

I live with recurring depression, and although it’s well-treated, it still sometimes rears up and creates symptoms that make it hard to write. The biggest one of these is fatigue. If you have never experienced this kind of bone-weary fatigue, then you can’t understand it; many people have said something along the lines of, “So you’re tired? All of us are tired and we still get up and work.” It’s not just tired. It’s that the very idea of opening the eyes is so overwhelmingly heavy that you must immediately go back to sleep. It’s that even if you force yourself to get up and sit at the desk and do the thing, you can’t actually do the thing because your brain is slow and things don’t make sense, and so if you’re putting words down at all, they aren’t really the words you want to be writing.

Depression also brings lots of other fun challenges with it. The moments of low self-esteem that make it hard to write because who would want to read it anyway? The moments of existential hopelessness that make it hard to write because what’s the point anyway? The memory problems that make it hard to write because you can’t grasp a thought long enough.

So, depression specifically, and health challenges in general, are what have most impacted my writing. But it’s not as straightforward as “I can’t write when I’m depressed, so I’m not productive as a writer.” It is more nuanced; that nuance is the crux of what I write about at Create Me Free. A lot of the writing that I have done has been about my experiences with depression. A lot of the writers I’ve networked with over the years who have helped grow my writing connected with me because we both write through depression. And, thinking like a writer, sometimes the only thing that’s truly kept me going in life is a deeply buried curiosity about what’s on my own next page.

What support has been valuable to you on your writing journey?

When I was in my early twenties, going through a period of undiagnosed depression, trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up, I felt really lost. I submitted a poem to a zine contest, and it won first prize. I got a $100 check in the mail and publication. And that was what made me decide not to quit on writing and instead to figure out a way to get paid for it.

It was the money. It was the recognition from others that something I wrote was “good.” But more than that, it was the start of a deep-seated faith that if I put out what I’m supposed to put out into the world, then the world will take care of me. It’s my job to do the work as honestly and authentically as I’m able, and the rest will somehow work out. I forget this and argue with it in my mind all of the time—because finances are scary, and we always feel like we don’t know what we’re doing, and there’s this urge to try to control the work (create a plan, execute it, monetize it…). But every single time, something small will happen, like that poetry prize, that reminds me, “oh, yeah, it’s going to be okay.”

So, the support that has been valuable to me has been those well-timed moments when something came through at exactly the right time I needed it. In the form of publications, a gift from a friend, a grant… whatever it may be.

That said, I have also had the invaluable support of:

• Strangers sending me emails, letters, texts, comments telling me about how something I wrote connected with them, reminding me again that it’s my job to do the work and the universe will send it where it needs to go.

• A close network of friends and family who are always there for me in all of those different ways—the ones that end up in “acknowledgements” sections of books.

• Creative groups at different times—writing groups, etc.—that support the development of the work in progress.

And I want to acknowledge that I have been able to work as a writer also, thanks to support related to privilege. The challenges I’ve faced as a woman with mental health issues are mitigated in many ways by the privilege of being a white woman who came from a middle-class family and all that comes along with that and makes it easier for me to access systems (loans, disability, education) that offer much-needed support and to feel like I have a safety net if I ever need one.

What support do you wish had been available?

Honestly, I wish I had a ridiculously wealthy patron of the arts who supported me so that I could do the work. Trying to support myself as a woman with chronic illness is hard. I’m proud that I have managed to do it through writing for almost twenty years… but so much of that has been writing “content” for other people, things I didn’t care about, sometimes things I didn’t truly support… in order to pay bills. And often, that has meant that doing the work to pay the bills eats away at brain space and makes it harder to do the creative work even when I do snag the time. The idea of just not having to worry about the money part is so appealing.

Also, I truly believe in the critical importance of divorcing the investment from the product when it comes to creative work. We live in a system that’s primarily, “you create something that I want, and maybe I’ll pay for it.” There are so many problems with this, not the least of which is that it tries to equate a specific piece of creative output with a specific monetary value when really creatives are creating an entire body of work, and sometimes you can’t see the value of it in one specific piece (or in the resting pause between pieces), but making those pieces and taking those pauses is absolutely a critical part of the process to actually get to the piece that someone loves. A patron pays for the process. I would love the support of a patron who believes in me enough to pay for the process.

I will say that I’ve been able to piece together some version of that through the crowdfunding tools available in the last decade or so. I got a little bit of support through Indiegogo to create my book Hook to Heal; I got invaluable assistance from GoFundMe when I was unable to work due to dental problems (and again for my dad when he was dying, and there were so many medical bills, and how am I supposed to write during that…?); I had a Patreon newsletter for a long time and switched that to Substack last year. I am super, super grateful to every single person who has given me so much as a dollar over the years.

But I think these systems are challenging because there are so many worthy projects, and many of the people who want to support them are other artists/writers, and everyone can only support a few. And you have to keep asking for the money again and again, which sometimes doesn’t feel good. And often you ask yourself, “am I giving them enough value for the money?” So, yes, a patron that just writes me a check once a year to cover all my year’s expenses would be my dream world support.

What more needs to be done to support writers facing mental and physical health challenges?

Universal health care that actually takes care of people for all of their different physical and mental health needs, including support during required downtime from work.

Guaranteed basic income programs for artists. More availability of emergency grants for artists and writers. (Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that a couple of those have really supported me in times when I desperately needed it. PEN America is one I can remember to give a shout-out to.)

What writers do you admire who talk about these challenges?

On Substack:

●   Lia Pas of The Slowest Thread

●   Rachel Katz of Inner Workings

●   Madelleine Muller of The Bed Perspective

●   Teri Adams of Reality Check – Crip Edition

●   Kate Speer of Healing Out Loud

●   Lisa Olivera of Human Stuff

And so many others that I’ll probably remember as soon as this gets published, and wish I’d added them.

Off Substack:

●   Glennon Doyle

●   SARK

●   Julia Cameron

●   Natalie Goldberg

●   Elizabeth Gilbert

Acknowledging the truth that this is a list of mostly white women. I am working on remedying that, but I suppose this is who I see myself in most closely.

When do you write? Do you have a routine?

When I learned about healthy boundaries (it took a long time, I am still working on it), I learned that often, our boundaries are either too porous or too rigid. It’s a concept I also apply to my writing routine. I have a routine that I try to stick to, particularly trying to write at least a little bit each morning before too much of the day has gone by. I know that the more consistently I do this, the better I usually feel. But I can’t always do it, sometimes because I’m not feeling well, and I’m also gentle with myself when that’s the case. 

You can subscribe to Kathryn’s writing at Create Me Free on Substack. If you’d like to share your own perspective on the relationship between mental health and creativity, Kathryn is currently seeking submissions for her “visual interviews” series on Create Me Free.

Posted in: Productivity

By: Allegra Chapman