Photo Credit: Kindred Photography
Award-winning Asian British comedy writer Amanda Rosenberg presents an intimate memoir of confessional essays about the hilarious, inappropriate, and often difficult side to being mentally ill.
We chat to Amanda Rosenberg about her new book, That’s Mental: Painfully Funny Things That Drive Me Crazy About Being Mentally Ill. She talks about the challenges of writing about mental illness, along with what readers can expect and book recommendations. You can find Amanda on Twitter and her launch event will be at The Bindery in San Francisco.
Hi Amanda! Tell us a little about yourself!
Hi! I’m a British comedy writer, I live in America, and I love television.
Your new book, That’s Mental: Painfully Funny Things That Drive Me Crazy About Being Mentally Ill, publishes on November 6th. If you could only describe your book in five words, what would they be?
Candidly mental but with jokes.
What can readers expect?
An almost too honest account of my experience with mental illness. I have bipolar II but was only diagnosed relatively recently. I grew up believing having a mental illness was scary, and weird, and if anyone knew you had one then it’d ruin your life. I spent most of my life hiding my mental issues because I was desperate to fit in and didn’t want to be a social outcast. But now everyone knows about my mental illness and I choose to be a social outcast. It’s so much better this way.
What made you want to sit down and write That’s Mental?
I wanted to write the book I wish I’d had when I was coming to terms with my mental illness.
Did you face any challenges while you were writing and how did you overcome them?
I’d say the main challenge was the writing portion of the book, that really held me back. Other than that, I’d say being pregnant. I know pregnant people are strong and can do anything, but I was not one of those people. I had a rough pregnancy and was depressed for most of it. So yeah, writing is hard enough without being repeatedly drop-kicked from the inside.
Is there a certain essay that was difficult to write, but you felt it was important to finish and be read?
All of them were pretty hard to write, even the lighter ones. As expected, the chapter about trauma, (brilliantly titled Trauma, Trauma, Trauma) sent me into a PTSD tailspin. I had to take a break after writing that one.
What’s your writing process like?
First of all, it’s awful. There’s a lot of moaning, sadness, and an incredible amount of self-pity, and that’s even before I get out of bed. I try to get in front of my laptop by 9am and stay there until I write something, anything. Some days I’ll write 2000 words, other days I’ll just write a title, but most days I write a paragraph and cry. The only rule I have is to never write after 4pm only because I am truly useless after 4pm.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for us?
You’ve probably read all of these but:
- We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
- All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
- The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon
- Also An Octopus by Maggie Tokuda-Hall
- Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
