Let’s be real, here: grief sucks.  It sucks so, so bad.  On the list of Emotions That Are Hard To Deal With, grief is at the top, florescent and harsh and without a hint of remorse.

When you’re drowning in grief, it’s like the world stops, the air goes out, and all you can see and hear is the echoing of your own pain.  Running from it is impossible, and it clings to you for much, much longer than it should.  It grabs your neck and punches your heart and laughs while you shrink down onto the floor or collapse onto the bed; grief doesn’t give a shit.

Which is why it’s so hard to write when you’re not directly feeling it. Read more »

Old News: Some of the greatest writers in the world were drug addicts, alcoholics, and totally depressed out of their minds. New News: Someone decided to scientifically figure out why.

University of New South Wales Psychology Professor Joe Forgas has done a lot of research around the whole “are sad writers are better writers?” debate, and has decided that bad moods could actually get you closer to your Ulysses-esque masterpiece.

According to Good.is, when Forgas made people watch either a funny movie or a film about Cancer, the people who watched the depressing stuff “produced arguments that were more concrete and therefore more persuasive than the happy campers.” Read more »

When I was an emo teenage writer, I would always say that I was a lot more prolific when I was sad.  I could never find something interesting to writing about — let alone force myself to write — if I was content and happy.

Now I know that procrastination is often the main thing holding me back from writing (see tips on “how to actually get some writing done“). For my style of writing, which features healthy doses of self-deprecating humor, a little distance is needed.  If I’m too “in the moment” of despair, all I can do is write to attempt to resolve.  Why am I feeling this way?  Why do people suck? Why can’t I get out of this slump?  Once the melancholy has passed, I can write in a way that’s less self-conscious. And I tend to think that being able to make fun of yourself is a key characteristic of a good writer (or a good person, I suppose). Read more »