If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about my writing, it’s that it seems to be at its absolute best when I’m at my lowest. The words seem to arrange themselves beautifully, while my mind at its lowest. So much so, that it really didn’t take much editing. Because somehow, when I come back to it later, I find that it’s some of the best writing I’ve ever done. Then it got me thinking, if this is something all writers experience? To all the past, present and aspiring writers out there: does it really take a mind in turmoil to produce writing that feels this right, this clear? I’ve certainly read about some of the great writers of the past, who created their most celebrated works while grappling with tremendous personal difficulties. Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment while burdened by financial troubles and the weight of his circumstances. Then there’s George Orwell, who wrote 1984, while battling tuberculosis and the severe isolation that came with it. Maybe there’s truly something tragically beautiful about words strung together when we feel like our lives are barely hanging by a thread. Because sometimes, writing does feel like a do-or-die situation. Like there’s something inside us that needs to get out, and the only way to make sense of the chaos is to put it into words. I’ve been writing everything from fiction and nonfiction to short stories since I was in high school, when I first began learning the craft. I fell in love with the written word early. Much of my childhood was spent reading storybooks in the comfort of my room. I loved disappearing into words, getting lost somewhere between the page and my own imagination. But it wasn’t until I was older that I became even more obsessed with creating stories, basically with writing in general. I read voraciously, absorbing as many great works as I could, almost as though my life depended on it (because it felt like it was). I made the written word part of my personality without realizing that, at the time, what I was really doing was escaping. I escaped into the stories I wrote on my old blog and the fan-fictions I wrote late into the night. I escaped by submitting pieces to my school newspaper. I escaped into the books I’ve read. I was doing anything but actually dealing with what I was feeling. And you know what I eventually realized?They were some of the best things I had ever written.
It seemed that the more unhinged I was, the better my writing became. There were even pieces I wrote during the height of my depression, when I would isolate myself for weeks on end and leave the house only to attend classes. Years later, I’d come across some of them again and read them with a strange sense of disbelief. They were…actually good. Really good. And that was when I started wondering if there was something about being at my lowest that made me a better writer. But how does that even work? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t a clear mind make it easier to write? When our thoughts aren’t clouded by sadness, anxiety or whatever else we’re carrying, shouldn’t it be easier to articulate what we mean? To get our thoughts across clearly? Then I thought about my own experience. I thought about how often I’ve used my pain to fuel my writing. How I’ve taken the things I couldn’t say, the feelings I couldn’t quite make sense of, and poured them into words instead. How writing became a way for me to escape into somewhere else, even if only for a few hours. And then I thought about the great writers, past and present, who seemed to do the same. That’s when I arrived at a rather simply conclusion: we don’t always write because we’re happy. We write because our minds are troubled. Because there are thoughts that won’t leave us alone and feelings that need somewhere to go. Because putting them into words is the only way we know how to make sense of them, or escape from them, even if only for just a moment. We don’t write because we have nothing weighing on our minds. We write because we have too much. Of course, that doesn’t mean we should go out and make ourselves miserable just to produce our best work.
If anything, I think being depressed can change your writing dramatically. Sometimes it makes it raw, honest, almost tragically beautiful. Other times, it makes the writing messy, incoherent and impossible to understand. There are certainly pieces I’ve written that make it painfully obvious that I was at my lowest when I wrote them. And that’s okay, too. After all, there’s a certain kind of power that comes with being a writer. It isn’t just about being able to produce beautiful words simply because we’re hurting. It’s in the ability to take whatever is happening inside us—the grief, the anger, the confusion, the loneliness—and turn it into something that exists outside of us. We have the power to tell people what to think, what to feel, even if only for a moment. We invite someone into our heads and ask them to see the world through our eyes. We establish the rules, decide how things work, tell them what matters and what doesn’t. And then, when we’re finished, we let them loose upon the world we’ve created. Maybe that’s the strange, beautiful contradiction of being a writer. We spend so much of our lives trying to make sense of a world we cannot control, only to discover that, on the page, we can create one entirely of our own. And depressed or not, happy or miserable, I think there’s something tragically beautiful about that. Sincerely, Cherie. The Whiffler is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell The Whiffler that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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