#visible

Featured Author- @hafyouseenhaffy

This month we have a really great featured author! Drumroll please.... hafyouseenhaffy ! I had the pleasure of meeting her at London's Wattpad meetup and am so glad she has agreed to answer some of the questions I had for her.

She has written the hugely popular book 'Suicide, Skittles and Skates.' which currently stands at 216K reads,  I mentioned it in a previous chapter as one of my all time favourite Wattpad reads.

Where did your idea for Suicide, Skittles and Skates come from?

The idea of Suicide, Skittles and Skates was a slow process - probably because I'd never written anything before and didn't know where to start! I'm a paediatric nurse and have always have the intention to work within child and adolescent mental health which means I've looked death in the eyes so many times it's almost become routine. I remember as clear as anything, though, the very first time I'd had a patient who'd tried to commit suicide - I didn't know what to do and considering I was just a student, I was able to sit there and just talk to her. It helped that I wasn't much older than her, she was able to relate to me far more than the other health professionals wandering in and out of the room. Just before I left at the end of the day, she asked me what I would miss if I'd died and without a bit of hesitation I just grinned and said Skittles (slightly obsessed here obviously!). When I first began to write, I'd developed my characters but that slight interaction sparked the idea of the story and well, here we are now.

Most of your stories revolve around mental health, is this a case of write what you know or for another reason?

I didn't really intend for them to be based around mental health issues to be honest - it was just something that happened! But yeah, maybe it is because it's something I know a lot about and have experienced many times so writing about these issues seemed natural.

Your characters seem almost effortless on the page, you have constructed them incredible my well- did you have to stop and think about how you were portraying their mental health problems or did writing about them come naturally?

No not really, in fact I didn't really think about the fact that my protagonist had a mental health illness. I just developed him as a character and the rest just came along by itself to be honest.

What was the hardest thing about writing about mental health?

The hardest thing was probably having to be really careful about the way I portrayed it. I didn't want it to seem like a cool twist at all. Mental illnesses and suicide are very romanticised these days in movies, books, the media and our society in general. People make it seem 'brave' or 'artistic' which is a load of rubbish! It's an illness not a quirky characteristic. I was very aware that there is a large demographic of young, teenage girls on Wattpad and did not want to contribute to this at all. I wanted others to empathise with my characters whilst being realistic which was quite a difficult balance to uphold.

What was the response from your readers? And did you expect it?

My readers grew steadily throughout my writing process but it wasn't until I had completed the story that the reads blew up. And it happened so quickly, one minute I was excited by my first 100 readers and the next I had 100,000! I definitely did not expect it at all but i'm so proud of it. Writing was something I begun by accident one day when I was really bored so it's pretty amazing that I've managed to achieve so much out of it.

What are your plans for the book?

I would love to sit down someday and rewrite the entire story. I wrote Suicide, Skittles and Skates in 2013 and my writing style has developed considerably since then. I think it could really benefit from not only correcting grammar and spelling but also adding in small bits to fill in plot holes or redevelop my characters to make them more diverse. And after I've done all that, maybe someday i'll work up the nerve to submit it to be published. Maybe!

What are your plans for Wattpad, writing and the future?

I'm trying to branch out and am currently attempting to write a story from every single genre on Wattpad in order to challenge my writing abilities. So far I've done romance, general fiction, paranormal and I'm also working on action. My only drawback really is lack of time - I'm a full time university student who is also working on the side - so it's really difficult to find the time and motivation. But i'm working on it! :)

Finally- what does 'diversity' mean to you?

To me, diversity in fiction should reflect the real world. Stories, as well as all types of media, must be varied in the character's race, religion, body type, sexuality, gender identity, class, disability etc. And that's because real people are varied in all these aspects and many more. For a child to look towards media and never see characters that look, talk or act like them, can be greatly damaging to their self esteem and can contribute towards internalised hatred. Representation is so important and I, for one, am sick and tired of watching movies and reading stories about the same kind of people. I want to read about people who look like me, who share my beliefs, who are varied in their characteristics and identity markers. A lack of diversity is lazy, it's boring, it's repetitive and quite frankly, it's downright offensive too.

Check out the Poem posted in the Anthology by hafyouseenhaffy , written exclusively for the Visible Anthology.