Writing away the Blues

Don't worry, start writing!

A few years ago, I was involved in brutal litigation with someone I had thought was a dear friend. During a six week span in the heat of the litigation, I needed a way to block out the stress, so I decided to start a new manuscript. The story had nothing to do with our conflict, it was pure escapism on my end. Thankfully at the end of the six weeks, the litigation ended in my favor, and I had a solid 60,000 words of story on my computer.

Can writing be an effective way to block out stress? That depends on the stress and it also depends on what you are writing of course, but I can honestly say that writing that novel helped me through a hard time.

In these troubled times, you might want to start writing a novel as well.

Writing a novel can force you to dream about something other than what's going on in your life. It can give you something to look forward to when you wake up the next morning. You will worry about your characters rather than worrying about something happening beyond your control. The beauty of writing is that you are the ruler of your own domain.

In your first draft, you are writing for yourself, in your second draft, you need to start writing for your readers. In a forgotten movie, Dennis Hopper's character once said "Just because it happened to you, doesn't make it interesting." There is writing from the heart and writing from the head. Adrenaline and emotion lead to great scenes, darling scenes even-- but a novel comes from brutally going over your material--killing your darlings.  So write that witty piece of dialogue down, but don't be afraid to edit it out if it doesn't fit.

One key to effective writing is rewriting. After a massive rewrite, and adding 30,000 new words, the story was published a few years later. It has sold steadily and gained critical acclaim. It also has given me good memories of a bad time.

Just because you write something in times of stress, doesn't necessarily mean that your writing stands up to scrutiny when times are better. However, the pure emotion in certain scenes of the book came from the emotion I felt in my real life. There are some scenes that are nearly unchanged from the first draft, and those scenes tend to be the strongest.

Don't worry, start writing!