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Me: I'm writing a book. It's called 'How to Train Your Hippie'.
Emmy: *noncommittally* Mm-hmm, that's nice. (She has heard the whole 'I'm writing a book' thing like a hundred times.)
Me: It's a tragedy. This girl's sister gets increasingly depressed and turns to New Age healing. It makes stuff worse.Then, like, she spirals into oblivion and dies.
Emmy: *side-eyed glance* *edges subtly away*
Me: It's a healing journey!! It's also a method of speaking out against New Age healing! There's gonna be numbers for depression hotlines in the back of the book...
Emmy: You're morbid, little girl. I swear sometimes I don't think you have a childhood.
Me: But -
Emmy: Shhh. Why do I even remotely enjoy your company
Emmy: *goes to read a book about Holocaust*The above conversation is what happens a lot of times when you tell people you're authoring a book where:

a) a character dies a horrible/depressed death
b) a character commits self-harm
c) a character loses a loved one
d) a character loses the will to live
e) a character turns to violence/murder
f) Hitler
g) genocide, pesticide, other kinds of cide
h) children have bad things happen to them
i)horror in general, and
j) cults.

AND THEEEEN they go and READ a book like that.

Allow me to channel my Psychologist Mother: People don't like to know that someone they openly associate with is having such dark thoughts/putting their dark thoughts out there for anyone to read. They like to believe that their friends are clean pure angels. HOWEVER to sate their cravings for violence they go and read other Books of Death by people who will in no way influence their lives at a later date. It all comes down to feeling safe and not wanting to OPENLY associate with violence but to still SATISFY a morbid curiosity about it.

Allow me to put it in English:
Author: I'm writing a book about a 5-year-old who dies of leukemia.
Person: You're terrible!
Person's friend: Hey have you ever read the Fault In Our Stars?
Person: Oh my goodness I LOVEEEEE JOHN GREEN I would TOTALLY marry him!!!!!!!!! Like the movie made me cry so hard
Author: How is this any different from what I just said
Person: You are NO JOHN GREEN. I can't BELIEVE you. Leukemia is a SERIOUS MATTER. It's not something you can just TOY AROUND WITH AND TRY TO MAKE MONEY OFF OF!
Person's friend: The Fault In Our Stars is a touching romance! It's for the weakened souls!
Author: The little boy's parents love him, is this not love
Person: Pain DEMANDS to be felt!
Author: I can help you with that, read my book!
Person: NO! I won't support people who don't take leukemia seriously!
Person's friend: But Augustus dies in the book
Person: Well yeah, people die.
Author: Uh spoiler alert...well anyway, you're basically proving my point...
Person: Your argument is invalid because....well, because....
Person's friend: Because some infinities are greater than other infinities!
Person: Yeah, that's it! And guess who's the smaller one? YOU!
Person's friend: Maybe 'Okay' will be our always....
Person: *sobbing* shut up!(Seriously, though, enough with TFIOS already. Gus dies, Hazel cries. The end.) No don't read that part this is an unbiased journal!! Anyway.

As you can see, people don't like to associate with death in real life, but they do like to look at it from far away through a metaphorical pair of binoculars (a book). Example: your mother goes to the state park every Saturday to watch birds, but when your brother brings home a parakeet, she screams about salmonella and bird poop and leukemia. Your brother then spirals into lonesome mournful depression and later writes a book (after a long rehab session) called Birds From A Distance: My Life With The Chickens.

You get it now?

To be honest, we are all guilty of the same complex except you you goth. You wouldn't want to be around a dying person, but when Gus died you totally loved it in a super morbid way and sobbed about it to your girly Twitter posse. Although if you did that you are not my friend. (This is an unbiased journal.)

However, authors have always been eager to challenge the boundaries of society. This is the only way we starving word-mongers ever make any money. Take the author of The Testing for example: it's not like it hasn't been done before, but nobody wants to believe/openly admit that we ourselves are destined for a dystopian future. Those senators and the president, sure, but us ourselves? No way. However, a well-written book should put you in the main characters' shoes and cause you to take a better look at yourself. *commence rainbow confessions hour*

Another example: Vitro. That was a great book, but what will it mean when we start taking human lives into our hands - literally? With only a glass test tube separating us from the cells of somebody who will be breathing the same air someday? Is that even ethical?

Or perhaps S.A. Bodeen's The Raft: simpler concept, yet a personal favourite? We've all heard the Lost At Sea On A Raft scenario, but if it were us, how far would you trust your sanity?

Oh my goodness, look above, I just TOTALLY WROTE CHILLING REVIEWS ABOUT THREE AWESOME BOOKS. WHOO.

Anyway my point is that authors can be misunderstood. If you know one, please be considerate to your author. If you are one, please be considerate to yourself: we're all morbid sometimes. Right Galaxy?

Continuing: I can't do this without channeling my Psychologist Mother once again.

You know you're the daughter of a psychologist when you've memorised the 5 stages of grief and apply them to, like, every situation.

So this journal is gonna be the 5 stages of Horrifying People, written from the points of view of both the author and his/her friends.

And because I have writeblock right now, I'm gonna annotate them like they're multi-stanza poetry.

i. denial
Me: So, uh, I'm writing a book.
Emmy: M-hmmm. Hold on, this isn't gonna be another morbid one right?
Me: it's gonna be really sad No, it won't be sad, I promise, just really....in..sightful. Yeah.
Emmy: Whew. Your morbid stories always make me break out in a cold sweat.
Me: Ha...hahahha...yeah. Not...not morbid at all.Let me point this out: to you authors who are currently in the stage of denial, that's impossible. I swear. You know what they call books with no dying, crying, or insecurity? Little Golden Books. If you wanna write Pokey the Puppy, go for it, but in the realm of children's books, I swear there is nothing new under the sun. Children's books:

a) alphabet
b) puppies/kitties/other baby animals
c) toys
d) dress-up
e) My Mom and Dad
f) Positive-Non-Racism books
g) Cliche Un-Flawed Superheroes Anonymous

This is the reaction you're gonna get.
Me: I'm writing a children's book about a little kitty who goes to the big city and meets a lot of friends
Louie: Ah! I LOVED Oliver!
Me: Uh, no, the cat's a girl...
Louie: However it's my soldieric duty to report you for plagiarism...
Me: I'm not! I swear I'm not!
Louie: You're wasting your talent, you should be writing something morbid.And you, stubborn author that you are, are stuck in the Denial phase and MUST find someone who likes your book.
Me: I'm writing a book about a lost cat...
Emmy: I've already read Little Bo. That used to be my favourite book in the world.
Me: No, this cat is named Abaille. That's French for bee, so, see, it's educational -
Emmy: There is NO cat book like Little Bo.
Me: Well it's gonna be really unique because -
Emmy: NO.So basically, push yourself out of your denial. A good basis for writing, even for slice-of-life-healing-journey books, is: solve the problem. To solve a problem, first you have to HAVE a problem. This involves crying, dying, and other morbid things people want to pretend aren't real.

Not only does the author go into denial, so do his/her friends.
Emmy: *on the phone with Louie* so, did you hear Madeleine's writing another book?
Louie: Oh yeah?
Emmy: It's not morbid.
Louie: No, no, of course not. She's not morbid...haha...
Emmy: She would never go dark.
Louie: Never.
Emmy: Not even that horror one about the kid who got murdered, that was, like, a fluke.
Louie: I heard she plagiarised it from that guy, what was his name?
Emmy: You mean Exploited Victim Luke?
Louie: Yeah, him.
Emmy: So you'd rather she commit a crime than for it to be a fluke
Louie: To be honest yes, she's too short to have that kind of sadness in her life
Emmy: She already has you
Louie: I know, right? Wait...
Emmy: I was kidding
Louie: That's it, this relationship is over.Because they are so afraid their short friend may be 'going dark', they fake-break-up with each other just to create a diversion. The drama llamas.

ii. anger

Believe it or not, reclusive authors DO feel emotions.
Me: WHY
Me: WHY DO I HAVE TO KILL THE KNIGHTINGALE
Me: HE WAS THE BEST CHARACTER BUT HE HAS TO DIE
Me: Everybody's gonna hate me
Me: KNIGHTINGALE WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO KILLABLE
Me: HHHNGGH I HATE MYSELFHowever, we people are VERY complex. We can't have a 'Just Anger' stage. With anger comes whining, because we're too insecure to take care of our own problems and so we take them to other people.
Me: Galaxyyyyy uuuugh
Galaxy: What's going on with you now
Me: I have to kill the Knightingale.
Galaxy: Aw man. He was a really good character. How are you gonna do it?
Me: I don't want to...... ;_;
Galaxy: Okay, then don't.
Me: I can't NOT kill him.
Galaxy: Ohhhhh, this again.
Me: What do you mean, This Again?!
Galaxy: This happens to you every time.
Me: Does not!
Galaxy: *copy-pastes text history*
Me: Hnnnnngggh I still hate myselfAs you can see it's not a big help, but it's a step towards the eventual end of the 5 stages, so you gotta let it go.

My big-brother big-sister friends also become angry at me (although it's impossible to stay mad at a cute shortie for very long so this stage isn't that harrowing for my social life).
Emmy: Oh my goodness I'm so mad at that little girl, she said she wouldn't go dark!
Louie: Calm down.
Emmy: Don't tell me what to do!
Louie: Oh so now you're making this about me huh?!
Emmy: I'm channeling my anger to you because I can't handle being mad at a cute shortie marshmallow girl
Louie: Me too
Emmy: Let's both go (passively) bother Exploited Victim Luke
Luke: I don't even know you why am I here
Emmy: *passively* anger
Luke: Me too
Louie: You can go now
Luke: Thank you *goes*
Emmy: ...that's about all the Madeleine-related anger I can handle. Why am I talking to you, you broke up with me
Louie: Oh yeah. I'm supposed to be in the Army. See you laterSo yeah. If you're not a cute shortie marshmallow girl like me it's gonna be worse for you. It'll go more like this:
You: I'm killing the Knightingale
Friend: WHAT HOW DARE YOU YOU TERRIBLE PERSON YOU KNEW I LOVED HIM
Friend: *slanders your name on Twitter*
Friend: *gives spoilers to the book*
You: I know I'm mad too shhhhh it's ok
Friend: I'm not mad anymore, I've moved on to the next stage
You: NO! Don't leave me behind in the anger stage!
Anonymous Twitter Person: I DONT KNOW WHO YOU ARE BUT I HATE YOU
You: Friend....please....You then follow your friend out of the Anger stage.

The fact is, friends are angry sometimes. It's just how it is. (You may find it useful to include your observations on Friendly Passive Anger in your upcoming book as well since it makes the characters seem more real.) But in the end, they're always gonna be there for you to lead you out of the Pit of Despair and help you move on. They'll support you. You just gotta endure.

iii. bargaining
Me: Galaxy, do you think I really haaaave to kill Knightingale?
Galaxy: I don't know. You gotta create tension somehow. You know the peeps are all about the tension
Me: Since when do you say peeps
Me: But anyway what if I kill both Star AND the Captain? That could make up for it, right?
Galaxy: But Star and the Captain have to get the Staff of the Eye of Ra
Me: Yeah...Knightingale could do it...
Galaxy: Knightingale is a wimpy doctor.
Me: He is not!!
Galaxy: Then who will die when the apothecary is set on fire
Me: Star and the Captain. They're, uh, parrot-sitting. Then they fall in spikes. And get burned. Then their ashes are acid...ed. Acided. And then their ashes are scattered across the whole earth.
Galaxy: But CaptainStar is the strongest shipping
Me: This is not a romance.
Galaxy: What's the parrot's name?
Me: That's not important right now. It's Yugioh. It is named Yugioh.Yes, I named the parrot Yugioh. Deal with it.

We bargain with our friends about our plots when we know it's really our problem to deal with; the thing is, talking things out with someone who understands can be a big help. No matter how reclusive you are, talk it out. I don't care if your mother was a Recluse Spider. Talk. It. Out.

We bargain with ourselves as well, because at this point things kind of....stop. It's hard to keep going when you know people are against you and even you are kind of against yourself because you loVE KNIGHTINGALE AND HES SO WELL DEVELLOPED AND YOUR BEST WORK but the truth is that'll happen no matter what character causes the conflict because you love all of them SO much, no matter how evil.
Me: Okay. I'm gonna write three chapters today. If I can get through being slandered on Twitter, I can get through this.
Me: *stares blankly at screen*
Me: I....don't know. I can't do it. This is the chapter where Knightingale dies. I'm scared to do it.
Me: Okay. It's okay. I'll just...revise chapter one and then go from there.
Me: *revising chapter one* Oh my goodness, this was such a cute scene! I love this part where Knightingale meets Star. They drink hot cocoa together.
Me: I can't do it. I can't. I can't write about Knightingale when I know I'm going to kill him.
Me: Okay, if I can do it, I'll buy myself a Hershey's bar. That's it. I'm gonna write this chapter NOW.
Me: HHHHNGH I know! I can write the three chapters AFTER the one where Knightingale dies!
Me: Oh my goodness....so much grief....everybody's grieving for him....
Me: TWO Hershey's bars. Just think, Madeleine. If you can do this you can have TWO HERSHEY'S BARS.
Me: One chapter, I'll lower it to one, okay?
Me: One half of a chapter. Then a Hershey's bar.
Me: A paragraph?
Me: Pleeeease
Me: A sentence, okay? A SENTENCE!
Me: *writes sentence* 'Knightingale woke to an alien heat and the scent of burning.'
Me: AAAGH THAT'S IT I'M DONE *eats three Hershey's bars*After a prolonged period - it could be anywhere from a couple days to a month - you'll get over it. I promise. There are still two stages of torture left to go through.

Our friends bargain too. Big-brother Louie and Big-sister Emmy are slowly giving in to the notion that I've gone dark.
Louie: If I come home to visit will you not kill the Knightingale?
Me: *rocking in the corner*
Louie: Speak to me.
Louie: If I come home for a week will you?
Me: *shakes head*
Louie: For a month.
Me: *muffled* I can't
Louie: I'LL QUIT THE ARMY JUST DON'T KILL HIM
Me: Why do you care?!
Louie: Because he's awesome!!Knightingale is totally awesome. Big-sister Emmy has a rare moment of superstition:
Emmy: If I help this hummingbird out of my garage I'm sure she'll stop being dark.
Me: *tentatively reduces the apothecary to ash*
Emmy: I'll bake some bread for the kids in China, then I'm sure she'll snap out of it...
Me: *shies away from the computer* I'm done. I'm so done with this
Emmy: It's working! Maybe if I watch anime it will convince her to stop altogether...
Emmy: EUGH I CAN'T DO IT *covers ears*
Me: *violently snaps back to violence and turns the roof of the apothecary to burnt rubble*
Me: *rafter falls inches from Knightingale's feet*
Me: GGRRR I WAS SO CLOSE Why can't I do this!!Bargaining is kind of a limbo step: it doesn't actually do anything, but it's necessary and natural. It's purely mental and completely not physical.

iv. depression
Me: I killed him.
Galaxy: Ohhh no here we go
Me: His funeral had lilies. And daisies.
Galaxy: I see *tiptoeing around the subject*
Me: Daisies were his favourite
Galaxy: Ooh, uh, cool....
Me: *does not answer for ten minutes*
Galaxy: Uhh...Madeleine?
Me: I'm Elmo
Galaxy: Huh?
Me: I was typing through tears just then, I meant to say I'm Sorry
Galaxy: Well it's okay, you don't need to apologise...
Me: I was apologising to Knightingale
Galaxy: Oh...okay.It's sad when your most well-develloped character dies.
Me: *locks self in room for eight days*It affects the dynamic of the entire book. You try to write, but your characters come out flat and unappealing. It will take a while to get back to normal. Keep writing, but take it slow.
Star: He was such a good guy *hiccups*
Captain: I don't know how to talk to crying people
Star: He shouldn't have had to die so young.
Captain: I think we're supposed to be having an empowered conversation about getting the Staff of the Eye of Ra and taking vengeance upon his killer...
Star: But I want to lock myself in my room for eight days
Captain: You don't have a lock on your door.
Star: Aw man...It also affects your readers and sends them into a min-phase of the Five Stages. SO meta.
Reader: Nah he's not really dead I'm sure he'll come back at the end of the book
Reader: WHY IS HE NOT BACK YET I AM SO DONE WITH THIS BOOK
Reader: In the next chapter I'm sure he'll be back. If I just read one more chapter. I know it. I can feel it in my marrow.
Reader: OH my goodness Knightingale my bae I miss you so bad
Reader: I'm over it he wasn't that great anyway...At last we have come close to the end. The depression phase can be very harrowing but it's for the best. Get it out of your system and then get to the triumphant ending!

v. acceptance
Me: I can't believe how terrible the Knightingale was, I'm so glad I killed him off. If I hadn't it'd have ruined the entire book.
Galaxy: Mm-hmm.
Me: Seriously. I don't even know why I got so worked up about it.
Galaxy: A trifle, I'm sure.
Me: Well that's doneYou're happy with him, but you won't miss him. Your future characters will be all the better for it.
Emmy: Well I guess we can't do anything about it, she's dark.
Louie: I'm done being broken up with you
Emmy: You're only doing that because this is the 5th stage.
Louie: Yeah kind of, I mean she's the one writing it.
Emmy: Okay, whatever.Your friends will forgive you. Secretly, they love your morbid side.
Luke: I hardly got any lines in this one.
Me: Sorry.
Luke: Stop apologising for who you are
Me: Ahhh so inspirational
Luke: That's my big triumph for today.
Me: I congratulate you.
Luke: *kitty emoticon*Ah, the kitty emoticon: the apex of normality! At last we're back to normal! Yes, kitty emoticons signify normality for me. I can't help it.

Thus the cycle of evil shall begin again...

I hope this rang true in some ways and gave you a laugh. I'll be back shortly.