04 August 2012

Turning Pain into Art

Without going into details, this is the worst time of my life. I am broken.

I haven't been doing much of anything, struggling to keep to my daily routines. Writing-related activities have fallen off my radar along with everything else. Even the last post on this blog had been scheduled earlier.

In the midst of the pain, there is a conciliatory thought. Now I know what this feels like, perhaps one day I can muster the strength to use some of it in my writing. My future works may been somehow enriched by this. Despair did muster my creativity into action briefly the other day, as I wrote a poem for the first time in years, pouring out my anguish as I tapped away on my phone on the train. Perhaps the depth of this emotion and confusion will unlock some deeper artistic need.

And during the coming days, hopefully I can pull myself back into life enough to work on my second draft. It's really the only thing in my life I can put hope in right now.

Have you expressed your personal pain in your fiction? Has art been cathartic for you?

2 comments:

  1. Yes, oh yes. My latest book REMEMBERING YOU was written during the most stressful depressing time in my life. I wrote it 4 years ago, and only just this past spring could I look at it enough to revise it. I cried every single time I read it. Did it help to pour the pain out into words? Yes. My characters faced all the sorrow and uncertainty I was going through at the time and I gave them a happy ending, (after torturing them for 240 pages) because I knew then, as I know now, crap doesn't last. Eventually it ends and you come out the other side into something better.

    Hope you get some relief soon.

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  2. I'm so sorry for your painful season. I'm keeping you in good thoughts and prayers.

    We are stronger than we know, but take all the time you need to recover.

    I have written from pain. Sometimes, writing is very helpful to move through, or on from a situation.

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