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My Relationship with Writing (And how my passion has sometimes done me more harm than good)

This year has been rather challenging for me — socially, emotionally, and perhaps spiritually. I have gone through adversities that firmly instilled in me the understanding of the value and significance of healthy relationships. I was experiencing, first-hand, what it meant to be in a toxic friendship, which caused me to bitterly reflect on my past for a month or so.

Gradually, I realized that the majority of my past friendships have been unhealthy — they caused me unnecessary emotional exhaustion that I was, stupidly enough, willing to put up with, for the mere sake of the few moments of joy I sometimes shared with these individuals.

With even deeper and broader reflection, I realized something else which was rather difficult to swallow: my relationship with writing has been no different.

Writing, the one thing I’ve always done diligently and tirelessly, the one thing I was known by everybody for admiring, and encouraged by friends to pursue as a future career, to be one of the causes of distress and agony in my life?

No way, but yes.

Because I handled it the wrong way, my passion has been weighing me down in ways I did not think possible.

Time for Myself

I had gone on a break from writing to take some time to develop the ‘observant’ part of the writer in me, as well as for my mental health. It was a slow process that my writing ‘hiatus’ was taking the form of quitting altogether. In fact, I was eventually growing delusional about it being a hiatus as the days passed by. And, oh, the Q-word! Deep down, the Q-word frightened me, but never to the point of reality, because I was simply certain that my passion was incontestably too invincible to ever be vanquished.

Yet, one day, I had to stop denying the manifest practical application of the Q-word onto my writing life. As I wandered alone and wistful one morning in the narrow underground tunnels for hours and hours, I broke the deathly 4 am silence by unfeelingly uttering the defeated phrase: I quit writing.

It almost hurts to say, but it was a truly liberating moment, albeit fleetingly. I felt immensely happy, unbound, and weightless enough to jump from rooftop to rooftop. I did not feel that I had lost a part of myself, but rather discovered another latent, budding part in me I did not even know I’d possessed.

I had gone from writing often to seldom, not because I had too little to say, but rather because of a lot of fear and a bit of apathy. On the contrary, I in fact have so much on my mind nowadays which, with even a modicum of inspiration and willpower, I could easily make use of to create poetic masterpieces.

What Caused This Toxicity?

My attitude towards writing, my love for it, and sometimes lack of it, poisoned my passion like a drip of ink in water. I had the tendency to look at writing as both an enemy and a friend that sometimes made me laugh and sometimes cry, made me feel worthy as an artist one minute and worthless the next. I oscillated from believing it to be my main source of hope for a blossoming future to fearing it to be the path to a lifetime of imminent failure and rejection.

Like my relationships with people, there are blissful days in my writing life which imbue me with temporary euphoria, such as the day I finally finish writing an article or a poem, or the one lucky day out of a week or two when I’m able to articulate my thoughts with seemingly impeccable eloquence, or the day my deeply thought-out ideas for my story seem to finally fall together, like stars that align in the darkness of my indecisiveness. These are comparable to the days my toxic friends (remember to) invite me when they go watch a movie, or spend an evening in the cafè, or simply the days they check up on me to inquire about my quietness with concern.

It would be a lie, however, to say that those euphoric days make up for the nightmarish ones, when writing behaves like a malicious enemy by reminding me daily that my efforts are not enough, and have never truly been.

Oftentimes I feel that my writer’s block is the equivalent of an amazing friend who deals with conflicts by giving me the silent treatment. This reminds me of another friend I once had who ignored me for so long that I’d now forgotten how his voice sounded like, just as I had forgotten how writing felt like.

Writing Culture

Unfortunately, if you familiarize yourself with the world of writing, you will notice some kind of palpable negativity embedded into the advice and tips that some writers give to amateurs and professionals alike.

There is always the belief that writers are essentially miserable, frustrated, and may go eons without producing meaningful work, or any work at all.

And there is the belief that writers are never satisfied with their work, and that they are, for every 60 minutes of an hour, banging their heads on their keyboards to reprimand themselves for their ineptitude and inability to live up to average expectations.

And then there is the belief that writers, every so often, seriously regret their past career decisions and question their future career plans in that field, and have this heated, full-on mental debate as to whether writing was ever created for them.

Positivity from Stephen King

I often felt the very same way, but my outlook changed drastically after I came across this interview with Stephen King and George RR Martin, where King shuts down these self-doubting thoughts with force and vehemence.

And I couldn’t help but think, What a Legend!

The unequivocal confidence he has on his place as a writer, and his choice to write, and his healthy attitude towards that choice, left me in awe.

So, after watching that, here are some of the thoughts I had to continually remind myself of in order to keep myself from falling off the ledge of sanity and into the abyss of despair:

Writing is not supposed to make you feel negative about yourself. Your passion has to be a door for your creativity and productivity. Your passion must serve as a main source of inspiration, catharsis, and a big part of your self-identity. Yes, it has to be difficult and challenging every once in a while. No, it is impossible for such a hobby to come free of hardships. But what we should not be doing is normalizing and romanticizing the constant mental/nervous/emotional breakdowns and feelings of self-doubt and self-loathing that many writers experience along with these challenges. This is not normal. This is not healthy. These experiences can, and should, inevitably happen every now and then; however, with regularity, they can weigh you down till your breaking point. They can mercilessly exhaust your passion and turn it into pure apathy or, better yet, resentment. And with an attitude that deems them as typical and welcomes their steady occurrence, you will end up either writing yourself stupid, or crumpling your empty papers into your fists with rage before calling it quits.

It took me a while to realize that while writing requires sacrifices, these sacrifices should never limit your overall quality of life and throw you into a zombie-like state of mind. I mean, at some point, I was missing classes, cancelling social plans, and skipping meals for the mere sake of productivity, because I was still unfamiliar with the heaven-sent concept known as balance.

Moreover, I believe that the main reason I agreed with these negative ideas about writers was because I was adamant about not changing my detrimental writing techniques (they felt … just right) and generally sought ways to justify them and regard them as the normal benchmark for artists.

The knowledge that I was not the only ‘writer’ who was unskillful with words, forever stuck in the void of writer’s block, brought me immense temporary reassurance, but in the long run made me feel that it was absolutely typical to feel listless, yet pensive, and frustrated at reconciling the two.

Writing the Pain Away

It is funny, because it took me a considerably long time to deduce why and how writing was causing me so much agony. It was not until two weeks ago when I decided to do some 3 am writing on my recent loss of friendship and unfathomable decision to quit writing (the irony) that I realized and accepted that the fault was on me and my poor coping mechanisms all along.

I’ve always said that writing was a revelation: it reveals feelings and thoughts in your heart and mind which you don’t even know are there. The more you write, the more you know who you are.

It might had been writing that caused me pain, but it was also writing that revealed to me why this was happening, and it’s also writing that I am, right now, using as an outlet to release the waves of ambivalent feelings flooding from my tightening chest.

So, depending on how you deal with it, your passion can leave you confused for months or it can decipher your most heavily complex feelings in an hour. And perhaps I should do less writing on the corner of my unmade bed and more on that bench outside in the grass and beneath the light of the sun.

Treat your passion like a benevolent friend who desires your success as much as you do, and you’ll be met with much more productivity and much less toxicity in return.

✍🏻 Written by Sanbella, writing intern at The YUNiversity