On Writing, Anger, and Sadness

What is it about writing that makes you feel so much better?

I mean, it’s also quite infuriating at times, especially when you have writer’s block.

And confusing, when you can’t think of the right word even though it’s super obvious (I had to ask my co-workers for help when trying to think of the word “masculine” the other day.)

Or scary, when you’re writing about the supernatural, which I do, unfortunately often in the middle of the night when no one else is awake. (It’s me… what else do you expect?) Or, scary in a deeper sense: scary when taking the plunge and describing something graphic, or exploring a character vastly different from yourself, or not being afraid to address an ugly truth.

But for me, and for many people, writing is also the ultimate mood-lifter. For people who aren’t writers, (as if I can call myself a “writer”), they think this means journaling, writing down your feelings in order to get them out of your head and to figure yourself out and calm yourself down. And that’s true. You always hear that recommended to people when they’re sad or upset.

As my family can attest, I can quite be the moody person at times. And by “at times,” I mean all the time. I had a horrible temper as a little kid, and even now I still have distinct irritable moods and down moods—just much less often. Being grumpy isn’t so bad, because after two minutes of being angry at the world, I realize it’s really not worth the effort and get over myself. But feeling sad or frustrated with something you have no control over is not so easy, at least not for me.

My solution has often been sleep. Feel upset? Take a nap and when you wake up you’ll feel better. Not to mention that nothing puts me in a negative mood faster than low energy. There’s a reason I go to bed by 10:00 pm during the week and am addicted to coffee.

This is rather inconvenient, however. I wear contacts and make-up and hate naps (they’re rather disorientating), not to mention that I don’t really have the time for them.

I’ve had a diary my whole life, but I’ve often found that journaling when upset or even writing about why I felt sad or angry after the fact just increases my sadness or anger by dwelling on it. I over think things through journaling, and then I end up feeling even more depressed afterwards.

Recently, however, I’ve discovered that, while journaling may make me feel worse, creative writing makes me feel better.  How does this work? I have theories, but no definite answers, of course.

Sometimes, I’ve written short stories that are, for all intensive purposes, autobiographical: a girl, my age, feeling the way I feel. By putting these thoughts and feelings into the third person, however, I’m able to separate myself from them. I can simultaneously feel them—but also begin to feel better, since technically it’s just a character. (It’s important to point out right now that I am an emotional person who is very in tune with my feelings, so, for me, this distancing isn’t a form of repression or anything.)

What’s enjoyable with these pieces is that I can not only put a distance between myself and my feelings, but my characters can do things I’m not at liberty to do myself (for example, punch a wall, if hypothetically that’s what I feel like doing, but have enough restraint not to), and as narrator I’m able to choose the ending of the story. Trust me; none of the stories I write when I’m feeling sad end unhappily. Nothing is nicer than reading (in this case, writing) a story about a depressed college girl who seems a lot like oneself that has a happy ending. Ah, you say; its ends well for this character—perhaps it will end well for myself.

And then you tear your eyes away from the computer screen and realize that you do feel much better.

Many of the pieces I write while upset or angry are not autobiographical, however. Once I wrote a kind of magic realism piece about a little girl who became friends with a star. I don’t know why; that’s just what came when I put my fingertips to the keyboard.

I have another work-in-progress that came out of an overwhelming feeling of anger and frustration at politics; yet, the story has nothing to do specifically with myself, Michele Bachmann, or anything remotely in the fields of politics. Instead, it’s (generally) about three girls on a road trip. Pouring my energies into that story, shifting my feelings of frustration into metaphor, character development, and plot, all made me calm down and express my anger at the same time.

I think, for me, the reason creative writing helps make me feel better is its marriage of escapism and separation to a channeling of energy and more objective analysis of feelings. I can’t be thinking about Congress or the budget when I’m submerged in the world of this girls’ road trip. That, in and of itself, is calming. But the story is also a product of the feelings directed toward Congress, and I distinctly know that, through the story, I want to express those feelings. Unless I feel like being painfully boring and obvious, I have to first figure out, on some level, either consciously or rather subconsciously, the intricacies of my frustration or sadness so that I can subtly express them in the story. And I’m a big proponent of the idea that understanding oneself and one’s feelings helps one to feel better and improve on those feelings.

Of course, when it comes down to it, writing—for me, personally—is really, all about emotion. Perhaps I’m trying to capture an emotion I felt. Maybe I’m trying to figure out how one would feel in a situation I haven’t been in. Or, in this case, maybe I’m trying to control my own emotions.

However it works, I find it comforting to know that peace is only a tap on a keyboard (or a pen stroke on paper) away.