Earlier this year, I went through the (so far) biggest tragedy of my life. I'm not going to get into specifics and details, so if you're looking for that, turn back now. I only share this incredibly intimate detail of my life to talk about the gross misconception that in order to write well, we need to write from a place of sorrow and loss. I, personally, have not found this to be true. There's this idea, especially among beginning authors, that the sadder a story is, the better it is– The more serious it'll be taken, and therefore it is great literature. After all, weren't all the classics about angst and tragedy... right? Except when we really break it down, sorrow has nothing to do with how well something is written. Artists don't have to suffer in order to make great art. We will suffer because we are human and it's an inevitable part of life, but we shouldn't seek it out as a means to gain material for our work. We don't need to plunge the depths of our soul for the things that scare us or make us cry. The best writing comes when we're able to process our emotions so we can write them honestly on the page.
When I'm sad and struggling to face what the day has brought me, I will admit, there is a certain sense of catharsis that goes with writing about it. Getting all of my rage and sorrow onto the page makes it feel as though it's leaving my body through my fingertips. It can be intoxicating to get the bad feelings out. However, I find that in that state, my writing ends up a jumbled mess, much like my emotions. It's written in such a state that it rarely makes sense and takes heavy editing before I actually find the things I meant to say. When I write in anger or sadness, I do it as an outlet– like journalling– rather than as fuel for my stories because it's just too unpredictable.
There's this sense among young authors (I especially find this in men) that the chaos of anger adds a sense of urgency to their writing. I feel as though we've put this idea of the tortured artist on a pedestal in figures like Hemingway or Plath. While these writers were certainly tormented by their diminishing mental health, they aren't the only great writers in the world. Much like how we sad things we regret when verbally arguing with someone, you inevitably write something you don't mean. You'll get sidetracked in the mess of emotional distress. That can be good for discovery at times, but it shouldn't be the main form of creation.
For myself, I found it incredibly hard to write during that time of tragedy. It's been easier for me to use writing as a way to escape those bad feelings and live in something lighter through my storytelling. If I were to try and focus on that time of anger and loss, it wouldn't make my writing more interesting or better, it would only consume me so I was no longer able to write.
On the flip side of this emotional coin, is the notion that we should write in times of heightened joy. Whenever I'm going through something wonderful in my life, I try with the same fervor to jot it all down, the same way I do when I'm sad. However, unlike the indecipherable ager, I find that my joy is written in bullet points. Where my anger has too much detail, my joy can't seem to be captured in words. I feel as though I'm wasting time, secluding myself to write, when I really want to be back in my life, living the joy instead of trying to capture it.
Writing in times of joy is valuable and often looked down upon in some literary circles. While sadness and torment are elevated as great works of literature, happy endings, and fairytale scenarios are placed into childish categories. I think that just like sadness doesn't make writing good, happiness doesn't make it bad. It's all about the balance and mixture of these emotions.
Writing when we're going through these intense emotions might just be the only thing to ground us in those moments. Writers are known for embracing our emotions and using them to connect with our readers. It's why literature connects so well with millions of people because we've learned to harness those emotions and translate them onto the page. I just don't believe we should let those emotions rule our writing. I don't think it's productive (happiness) or healthy (sadness) to only write when we're feeling something intense. The key to all of this is finding a way to feel those emotions, process through them, and then gently tap into them when writing.
We should be using our own experience like a word bank when solving the puzzle of our stories. Being able to tap back into those emotions is critical for writing full and three-dimensional characters. It's needed when being sure we have an emotionally satisfying resolution. Hell, we should even be using those emotional highs and lows to put ourselves in the shoes of our heroes and villains to understand their motivations. Keeping notes on how we felt during those times is helpful. What I would like to advocate the literary community stops doing is saying we have to trigger those emotional highs and lows, or that we have to live in them in order to make good work. I want to stop pushing the narrative that a sad ending is "higher brow" than a happy one, or that we should only write about happy things in order to not offend anyone.
Stories need to be emotionally complex because people are emotionally complex. This even leads into the conversation about AI attempting to generate stories (which is really a topic for another day, but it connects.) We have to be able to experience our emotions as we write, I just hope you don't let them rule you. And when you are feeling overwhelmed by them, happy or sad, you take a moment to reflect, breathe, and journal before getting back to your story.
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