Writing when Emotional? Not!

Photos by Roberto Kaplan

On a Write Tribe blog prompt, "November Challenges and Motivation" right at the end of the post was a link to a non-fiction writer's blog, Ollin Morales. He posted "10 Tricks To Motivate Yourself To Write–Right NOW" on his blog, Courage to Create (http://ollinmorales.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/motivation-2/).

Point #7 especially appealed to me: Work Through Emotions (bolding below is mine for emphasis):

When we are highly emotional or under a lot stress these are the most challenging moments to get motivated to write. After all, if our boyfriend or girlfriend doesn’t love us, or our parents are judging us, or our boss hates us, how can we possibly feel good enough about ourselves to do what we love to do?

Now, generally writers and other artists get their greatest inspiration from their pain and anguish, so in those cases making the art is easy. But that’s not the situation I’m talking about. I’m talking about when what you are planning to write either is not congruent with your emotions or the emotion acts as a wall to your creativity.

To work through these emotions, first write all of your emotions down. Just listen to what your mind is ranting about and write it all down, let it all out, everything. If you’re writing it on your laptop then as soon as you’re done, trash that document. If you wrote it on a piece of paper, throw that paper away or burn it if you’re into dramatic displays.

For the moment at least, you’ll wash away that emotion and you should be able to move forward with your work.

My apologies for this lengthy copying of (blog) text above; however (1) it is a late hour and I require a post today and (2) it encapsulates a blogger’s question and ensuing comments from supportive 'tribe' bloggers that inspired me to expand on this, today as she is planning to post an emotional piece tomorrow.

Writer's block is a common phenomenon and feeling particularly emotional can at times stifle creativity. It can also make for some rather incongruent writing in which you and most likely your readers will experience.

I believe I experienced this recently or at least I think I did! Since the beginning of this month, I feel like I have been feeling somewhat uninspired to write which is unusual. This could be attributed to physical pain which makes me emotional - grumpy and/or sad at times - and makes it challenging to focus at times. And I know there is one post recently that I wrote where I felt my heart wasn't into it and the emotions seemed lacking and incongruous to the post though I can't seem to find it.

Perhaps being a passionate, i.e., emotional person, Ollin’s blog post really appealed to me. However, do I heed his advice? I admit rarely, the odd time though not often enough. I say that because I stop myself, usually putting other things, namely work as a priority, and myself last. I do this often.

And so by the time I have the time, say during a break to pour out my heart in written (or typed) words, the immediate emotional intensity and its accompanying thoughts and feelings are gone: vanished! Or liquefied at least. It seems hardly worthwhile after that to write. The emotional anguish, pain, intensity that I experienced now seems or is superfluous. (I didn’t think so except that word came to me intuitively right now as I’m typing this, so I trust that. And yes, it could work here actually!)

For example, there was a title that came to mind in an incident that made me get rather upset about two weeks ago, "Plastic Faces, Plastic Voices" or was it the reverse "Plastic Voices, Plastic Faces?" Though I really do wish I had expressed it, released the angst I felt at the time by writing about it (in the form of a poem, prose or otherwise), by the time I put me at the forefront to do so, it hardly mattered. In fact, I couldn’t even be bothered. I neither had the interest – not as much as it had waned – nor the time. And in a way, that was just as much or perhaps even more frustrating!

Do any of you experience this? If so, what do you do and/or how do you handle the situation? How do you (best) express your emotional pain/anger/angst/frustration?

I am linking this to NaBloPoMo and Write Tribe Bloggers.