Do you find being depressed is good for your writing? i.e. you write more and are more motivated? Do you think there's a link between feeling down and being creative? Questions that I ask myself - I would be interested to hear about other people's experiences!

Hello Traveller,

Being depressed makes me feel apathetic and negative and unable to write 'creatively' which then becomes a vicious circle - the lack of acheivement feeds into your low self esteem.
I do however find it very helpful to to get stuff out of my system on paper - writing fast in a stream of consciousness. I never read the stuff though - I can't stand to read me whingeing on, but it serves a good purpose.
Depression is torture, and I sympathise enormously if you suffer from it.
I think however if you have a tendency towards depression you really can learn to live with it and not let it run you.
They say, 'own your depression,' don't run away from it.
On the positive side the introspection that comes with it can give you insight that you can bring to your writing.
I hope this hasn't ended up sound like a lecture. I didn't mean it to.

Amnesia.

Depends what you're trying to write. If I'm writing a miserable scene or about a depressed person I write it a lot better if I'm feeling that way myself. Guess it's easier to get into the character and think as they do. There have been times when I've had to leave a scene or chapter until I've had a row with someone or felt like s**t because the writing felt false otherwise.
Sue

Not so much depression but living through troubled times – whether personal or public. I know a lot of people, myself included, coped with their reaction to 9/11 by writing.

I think it’s an escape mechanism. I wrote my first novel in the early 80s when I felt trapped in a marriage that wasn’t working. I secretly escaped into my writing and naively planned to use the money from it to leave him and start a new life on my own. I wrote the first three chapters and sent them off to a publisher. Within a week I got a letter asking for the full ms. (heady days!) I had to tell them I hadn’t written it. They said they were happy to wait. So I kept plugging away. I had all but the last two chapters written when my husband discovered what I was doing. I thought he was surprisingly supportive until he told me he’d decided which new car he was planning to buy for himself with the proceeds from my book. That was the final spur I needed to leave him.

I moved to a different area, found somewhere to live, got a job. I was as happy as a pig in a midden… I wrote the last two chapters of my novel and sent it off to the publisher. They rejected it because it didn’t have a satisfactory end. Actually they didn’t totally reject it – they suggested a rewrite but – because the anger and the angst had gone from my life – I didn’t do it. Oh my! How many times have I regretted that over the past few years!

The point of this little tale is that – at the time – I believed it was my frustrations with a failing marriage which was fuelling my writing, and that my happy new life was the reason I failed on the last two chapters. And that belief kept me from writing any more until the summer of 2001. June 15th. I remember the date and the sense of adventure I felt when I sat down and started writing again.

I wouldn’t say there’s a link between feeling down and being creative but, when we use our creativity to escape a difficult situation – even if the escape is only in our minds, we can connect the two and, if we’re not careful, that imaginary link will hamper our creativity when we are not feeling down.

Be warned – I wasted 20 years thinking I couldn’t write if I wasn’t unhappy…

ee.

I find that it does help if I am let's say reflective rather than depressed but then I am usually reflective about the sad things that have happened to me and others in life.

i also find a fascination with death,the mystery, the sadness the hoplessness the pain and suffering the myths and the stigma of death.

not because I am morbid just find it a great subject for inspiration

take care

david

I agree with Sue it does depend on what you are writing.
At the moment the characters I am writng about make me smile, so the writing experience makes me happy.

I couldn’t write creativley if I was down, I save that for the journal. Interesting discussion,
Dawn,x

- Dee, I think what you doing now is fantastic. Wishing you lots of success, you deserve it.

Dawn - thank you! What a lovely thing to say.

Sue - I seem to have the opposite problem. I’ll be at work, running through an argument in my head, and some poor sod will come to me with a perfectly valid question and get their head bitten off.

Luckily they all know now what I’m doing so they just wait until I come back to reality and then repeat their question.

ee.


<Added>

I’ve just realised what an ‘unprofessional’ discussion we’re having. Surely if we want to be professional writers we should be able to write any emotion or scene, at any time, regardless of our personal situation or feelings.

Imagine an actor saying they can’t shoot a scene because they’re not in a suitable mental space… it just wouldn’t wash, would it.

Dare I say it - is this the difference between ‘professional’ and ‘non-professional’ writers?

I’m not throwing down a challenge here. I’m just wondering if this is one of the skills we all need to hone…

Dee.

That's a depressing thought. Maybe though actors are only reciting other people's words whereas we are creating them. I could read a sad poem/story aloud when I'm happy and vice versa but know that when I'm pissed off or miserable I couldn't write a happy lovey scene. Professional or non-professional? Don't know?
Sue

Traveller, depression must concentrate emotions, which I feel spur on writing and the need to tell tales of experiences or fictional story's. Being depressed, I imagine would be like writing while drunk, in the morning you can see things through sober eyes and correct things, but if continuously depressed it would be a long and deep tunnel which would be hard to get out. Passion is your best ally, and if you can focus positively on your story and get inside it you can create a little world, which you can control everything, which may give a depressed mind a break. All the best Pete.

Depression is what made me begin writing in the firslt place. I find it to be a form of therapy.

I think we need to define what we mean by 'depression'. If we're talking about being sad, down, a bit low, then that's a very different thing from being medically depressed. If I'm low, then it varies, sometimes I can write myself out of it, other times its hopeless.
I've been medically depressed in the last couple of years, still under treatment. When I was deep in it, I couldn't cope with writing my name, but as I came out of the worst, I began to write properly for the first time. And I've never stopped, it's been terrifically therapeutic and very rewarding. I make sense of some of my trauma through writing, exorcise some demons too. And it's cheered me up no end!
But what's interesting is a lot of my impetus still comes from the bad times, guess I'm still working through them, and for me the outlet is a creative one. Lots of people write to escape, and what they produce is nothing like their own reality. I write mostly about my own reality - anyone who reads my poems can see how miserable most of them are! Will I still be able to write when I'm 'better', when I'm happy? Maybe I'll have nothing to say, then. I'll let you know!

x
tc

I share with tc.

The time when I became depressed - that deep ever-present state of mind - it squeezed out any creative thinking and would only entertain thoughts of how to end it all.

I think tc is right and there are depths of depression and if you are in the lowest dungeons your mind is truly imprisoned and without any ability to 'think straight' let alone creative.

Len

I think often it's a question of heightened emotion.. maybe not necessarily depression..but many things can trigger off a deeper awareness resulting in an ability to be in touch with one's creative inner self.

Ellie

From a scientific point of view it has been showen that depressed people have a more realistic perception of the world than non depressed people.

There is also lots of evidence to show that extreme mental and neurological disorders often afflict highly creative people and that these are also link to high rates of depression.

There have been some interesting articles in New Scientist but I'm damned if I can find the bloody things. I've just spent the best part of an hour trying to find one in the online archive.

How depressing!

Geoff

wow - didn't expect such a response to my posting - i definitely find being depressed as brilliant for my writing - it motivates me - when i'm happy, i don't feel the motivation at all - i find i can't write or i don't really want to write - i also find i'm less creative..harder to catch ideas..writing is escapism and when there's nothing to escape from, it becomes much harder...but then i ask myself, isn't it weird to want to be depressed for the sake of my writing??!!!
Also, i think, yes, there must be a distinction between feeling down and having clinical depression which is obviously a lot worse and luckily something I've never suffered from.