It’s been a week since I finished my latest novella. And honestly, until this morning, I was in a funk I couldn’t break out of. I mean, I should have been dancing on the ceiling in my excitement. Instead, it was hard for me to sit upright. I still can’t open the file to do the edits it requires.
This got me thinking this morning…how many writers get themselves emotionally invested in our work? And is it just limitted to writers? I mean, I think it’s clear that nurses who work in the neonatal intensive care unit might have a hard time shutting down after a day at work. It goes without saying that prison guards have a hard time, too. There are some jobs that we just assume have a lot of emotional baggage.
Is writing one of them?
We work in an industry that takes our work and often leaves it in shreds of little more than wasted effort. Even when we sell well, there are reviews that leave us heartbroken. Or there is the family member who doesn’t take us seriously.
Of course, when i get thinking this way, I keep thinking of Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys
Tired, worn down, and burying himself in a bottle, more often than not, rather than face the blank page, and the real possibility the next thing he writes won’t be anywhere near as good as the first (and last) book he wrote.
But of course, using a movie metaphor is more than appropriate in this case. Because, like actors and actresses, writers have the definite advantage of being able to let our characters live our pain for us. Writing can be cathartic–a cheap form of therapy even. As such we should be a pretty happy bunch.
What do you think? Are we the tortured heroes/heroines of our own minds? Are we sublimely happy in the release of writing our darker selves? Does our work make us more susceptible to emotional backlash? Or are we, at the end of the day, really just average people?
October 6th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
I didn’t pay too much attention to this until I wrote a book for kicks (not too serious)and it was rejected.
Then I realized that I was invested in the story and characters and hadn’t even realized it.
Most of the authors I’ve talked to have always had trouble with rejection and yet, here we are in the one profession that sets us up for LOTS of rejection.
It takes some angst to write, I think. In the long run, emotion is what makes a good book and we’ve got a lot of it.
October 6th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
I can’t answer all your questions. For me, writing is emotionally exhausting and physically and mentally draining. When I finish anything, short or long, I want to veg a couple of weeks. It’s recharge time for me.
Are we average people? I don’t think so. If we were all the readers/friends/family members in our lives wouldn’t constantly being asking where our ideas come from lol.
My husband is a police officer, a demanding job physically and emotionally. But he’s able to turn off work in a way I can never turn off the book I’m currently writing. If I’m not working on it, I’m thinking about it. If I’m asleep, I’m dreaming about it.
And yes, writing is cheap therapy lol. When I go long stretches without writing, I get moody and irritable and I’m impossible to live with. Writing is cathartic. It helps keep me balanced.
October 7th, 2006 at 3:00 am
Writing is emotionally draining for me too. I have to take a break afterwards. And I definitely get invested in their lives, how they fell, what makes them tick. But writing also soothes me. Keeps me sane. There’s no way in the world I need to run around with all these characters in my head. People would think I was crazy.
October 7th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Lori…we are totally long lost twins. That’s *exactly* it. My husband doesn’t wake up in the morning working on reports or building condition assessments he didn’t finish the night before. but I DO wake up reciting a query letter, hoping to remember it until I sit at the computer.