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TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN Author John Green talks living with OCD

John Green’s own mental health issues is what inspired his latest book TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN.

John Green‘s latest book, Turtles All the Way Down, was just released and we’re so excited for everyone to read it! Of course, this one has to be especially special for the author himself, not because it’s his book, but because he’s more familiar with the subject matter on a personal level.

You see, the main character, Aza Holmes, deals with obsessive-compulsive disorder, something that John has dealt with and is dealing with it himself. He opens up about it in the following video:

Below, he explains why he decided to write Turtles All the Way Down:

I didn’t start out thinking I was even writing a book. I started by thinking, I need to try and find expression for this way-down terror that controls so much of my daily life.  Part of what’s terrifying about pain is that it’s difficult to access or describe via sentences. It’s what’s so frustrating for me and what’s scary about my own mental health problems. I wanted to be able to show people what it is really like. I wrote the book in the hopes that people who go through this would feel less alone and also in the hopes that people who don’t go through it can maybe glimpse something about it.

He also talks about how writing has been a coping mechanism for him:

Yes. It’s a way to not be me for a while. To not feel the stress of being stuck inside this slowly decaying and deeply contaminated meat locker that is myself. It’s been a way to imagine what it was like to be someone else for a while and be free from that. But that [relief] went away after The Fault in Our Stars. It stopped working. I had a pretty bad…somewhat bad…let’s say, medium-bad-level mental-health crisis in 2015. That was the worst it’s ever been, and it was very scary for a few months. Coming out of the months of long misery, I felt like if I looked more directly at it that I could find some comfort in writing again. I started with an email and I thought, “Oh, this is fun. This is great.”

Read the full article right here.

By Kait

Kait is a New Englander, a YA book and adaptation lover, and a Slythindor, as well as a red velvet and red wine enthusiast. She likes to like things. Catch her on Twitter: @kaitmary