Overview

Dead Versions of Me A Memoir by Elliott Collinson Dead Versions of Me is not a redemption story. It's the wreckage after the reckoning. Told through poetic letters, fragmented reflections, and psychological descent, this semi-autobiographical memoir explores the high cost of immersive storytelling. Elliott Collinson didn't just write characters-he became them. This is a book about what happens when passion turns into possession. What begins as personal reflection transforms into emotional exorcism, charting the collapse of identity as the author dives headfirst into Method Writing-a process that blurred fiction and reality so intensely it fractured his sense of self. Each chapter acts as a eulogy for the versions of him that didn't survive the performance: the charming ones, the poetic ones, the broken ones still waiting for applause. At the heart of the memoir is Chapter 9: The Allusion Letters - a nine-part descent into ego, grief, false strength, and the aching need to be seen without being solved. This isn't about healing. It's about telling the truth so recklessly the past starts answering back. It's about trauma that doesn't care to be inspirational. Grief without ceremony. Ghosts that don't leave when the story ends - they linger, silent, until written. Written in the aftermath of what Collinson calls ""self-inflicted bipolar storytelling,"" this memoir is a brutally honest account of creative obsession, mental breakdown, and the thin line between becoming the writer... and becoming the characters. He didn't set out to be a writer. He set out to survive himself. From letters penned during the fall of a baseball career, to screenplays haunted by emotionally volatile characters, Dead Versions of Me maps the wreckage left behind when the page becomes the only place you still exist. This is not a how-to book. It's a how-you-break book. For anyone who has: Lost themselves in the work they thought would save them Written just to survive the night Carried characters long after the writing stopped Wondered if the voice in their head was ever really theirs ""I wasn't writing fiction. I was writing funerals. And the characters weren't invented - they were versions of me I'd already buried.""

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9781764229104

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Elliott Collinson is a writer, producer, and former athlete (of no notable history) who believes in going too far, then writing his way back. He doesn't claim to be a literary voice in the traditional sense, but he does claim the wreckage of his very colorful past. His work comes from a place most people spend their lives trying to avoid: the deep end of self-invention.Born in Perth and now based in Sydney, Elliott's path to authorship wasn't linear. He didn't find writing through academia or quiet reflection; he found it by losing himself inside characters he never intended to live through. What began as screenwriting became a kind of emotional possession. He calls it method writing, a creative process so immersive it blurred the boundary between fiction and identity. The result was something he now refers to as self-inflicted bipolar storytelling - the psychological whiplash of embodying too many truths at once without ever stepping back.Dead Versions of Me is his first book, part memoir, part emotional autopsy, and part literary graveyard. It's a reckoning with the selves we become while chasing meaning, survival, applause, or silence. Through poetic narrative and psychological grit, Elliott offers not healing, but honesty. And sometimes, that's the more dangerous thing.He is currently developing multiple companion projects across graphic novels, screen adaptations, and experimental formats through Dead Versions Creative. His diary is full. His ghosts are louder than ever. And somehow, he's just getting started.

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