Writing Through Emotion
Finding the motivation to write can be difficult. I have productive days in which I write close to 1,000 words. Other days, I end up either not writing or getting well below my goal (700 words). Ultimately, it is better to get some words in rather than nothing at all. One big motivator is the cathartic feeling of writing through my emotions.
While I will write some scenes for levity, my work is dark and often bleak. My next book was written out of anger, with a mix of depression, about the capitalist hellscape we live in. The current work-in-progress is also out of anger, which will feature a lot of Nazi punks getting killed in wonderfully brutal ways.
When I write, I know I am writing something meaningful. I don’t write a story until I have a subject I want to explore, from capitalism to religious extremism. From there, I have an emotion I am homing in on, whether it is anger over fascism in America or neoliberalism in America. Yeah, there’s a trend of me writing about how much I am pissed off at this piece of shit country.
Whatever you’re feeling about whatever it is you’re writing about, use that as your fuel. Write through your sorrow and grief as you work on that story about someone losing a loved one. Write through your ire as you chip away at that manuscript about the rise of fascism. Whatever you’re feeling, that is your motive to sit down and get some words in for the day. It doesn’t matter if you reach your word count goal for the day. It doesn’t matter if you don’t even have a goal for the number of words you write in a day. Just get something on the page and let yourself feel as you write.
The stories we write will not be shaking the world or fixing much of anything. It doesn’t mean it isn’t meaningful. Art can have societal impacts, but it is often the intimate ones that are common, and that is what’s important, even if it moves one person.
Even if nobody reads it, be a little selfish and let yourself heal, even if it is a fragment of whatever is hurting you. As much as we may do this for readers, a part of it is for us. Hope that it affects a reader, but what will happen is that you will be affected. Writing can be self-care as much as it is giving therapy to your reader. So, write through your happiness, sadness, or fury. It is all valid.