Before the pandemic, a good friend of mine wrote in public places, environments where there were people around and quiet background noise. That was his routine for over twenty years. With those places no longer open, along with all the other stressors of the pandemic, he stopped writing. Now he is struggling with anxiety and depression. I’m convinced at least part of his struggle is related to the fact that he isn’t writing.
I’ve always been a great believer in writing as therapy. For years I credited writing as the reason I had overcome the depression that had haunted me since childhood. Writing novels not only gave me purpose and a sense of accomplishment, but soothed my restless, anxious spirit and suffused my brain with endorphins. (My husband believes the same thing is true of running, and that you get addicted to any activity that causes that natural production of those pleasurable chemicals.)
My “drug of choice” worked for me for many years. But then, very gradually, writing lost much of its calming, and yet also energizing, effect. The loss started as my career faltered. As the rejections started to pile up, my focus changed from the flow of words and immersion in a fictional world, to producing books, specifically books that would please other people and bring me success. I became desperately engaged in a quest to find the story that would interest an editor and relaunch my writing career. Even when I was in creative mode, there was a part of me that was analyzing, assessing, holding back from what I was writing, worrying I would have to abandon it when the dreaded rejection arrived.
The option to self-publish my books and then to publish with a small press helped to re-start my career and give me a positive focus. But even then the ultimate emphasis was on whether the books would be successful. The natural, joyous flow I used experience while writing started to come only intermittently.
I’ve been trying to get back to that early process of “writing as therapy” for a long time. And now I have to try to convince my friend of the benefits of writing as well. It’s clear he needs it for his mental health. But like me, he is discouraged about the current publishing world: the tremendous competition, the focus on marketing, the sense that writing a book is a futile effort when there is little chance of it ever achieving even modest success. For those of us who don’t have the resources, skill or mindset to be successful at the marketing part of a modern writer’s job, publishing a book becomes a daunting, Sisyphean task. Hardly a prospect that encourages “writing as therapy”.
The key, many people say, is to disconnect the creative part from the career/marketing part. Divorce the two processes so the frustrations of one don’t leach into the other. Easy enough to say, but hard to do. Especially for those of us who have known some publishing success, enough to keep our dream of having a writing career (of some kind) alive. How do you make yourself entirely give up on that dream, and focus simply on the creative process?
I need to get my friend back to writing. His mental health and happiness depend on it. And I need to get that flow, that sense of satisfaction and delight, back in my own writing. I won’t say that I need to write fiction to be happy, but without that pure creative expression, there is always going to be a lack, a sense of dissatisfaction, with both myself and my life.
I’m interested to learn how other writers cope with this challenge. Any suggestions are welcome.