I can only write when I'm emotional
Does that make me less of a writer?
On Sunday morning, I propped myself up on the multitude of cushions on my bed and opened Substack. I had thirty minutes or so before I had to leave the house to meet a friend. I’ll get some words down, I thought, because surely all I have to do to be a writer is, well, write. I created a new post and gave it a title. But as I stared at the blank page – the white glare hurting my eyes – my brain went quiet, noise silenced. Usually I would claw at memories and dreams of people I know and once knew, but not today. My mind wandered to the swim I knew I’d be enjoying later that day, the rush of my head submerging under the cold water. I exited the draft. Then I did the same thing five times over. On reflection, in that moment, I was quite content – lying in bed, breakfast eaten, tea drank, one episode of a bad-but-good British sitcom watched. A beautiful day ahead of me.
Typically, writing isn’t a challenge as much as a necessity. When I feel sad, angry, helpless or moved, I rush to my laptop. I open it with such ferocity that afterwards I worry I’ve broken the screen. Sometimes I’ll have tears streaming down my cheeks as my fingers hammer on the keys, and while I have to reach for tissues, thoughts pour out of me with such ease, they sit naturally on the page. And then my heartbeat quickens with desperation – publish, publish, publish! What was once sadness, or love, with a burning desire to get out, has been released into the world, and my insides feel fizzy.
So what happens when I’m happy? Writing can become a mammoth task. It’s not too dissimilar to how I felt throughout most maths and science classes at school – uninspired, like I’m taking on something incomprehensibly difficult.
Then I found a quote by American singer-songwriter Fiona Apple: “I only write when I'm angry or sad, so because that's when I just have to write... If I'm having a good time and I'm happy and things are going really well, why would I want to stop what I'm doing to go and write at the piano?”
The drafts are still sat there in my folder, all titled, no body copy. Maybe you can’t be creative all the time. Maybe I’ll accept it, for now, live a little, then try again later.