For You The Bell Tolls
Have you heard of Hemingway? Of course you have, practically every person who is a writer or an avid reader knows who Hemingway is. A macho man, who drank more than his fair share of liquor, did big game fishing and hunting, but also had a softer side. He was an emotional writer, filling novels with the thoughts and feelings of a sensitive mind. And his novels were beautiful, both in their subject matter and their simplicity. But among the novels he wrote, he also had nearly just as many wives and mistresses.
It all first began with a nurse during the war that he fell in love with, had an affair with, but then never ended up marrying her. Then he moved to Hadley Richardson, who he did marry, and wrote The Sun Also Rises during married life. The book was published, and it was a huge hit. Next came his infidelity towards Hadley with her friend Pauline Pfeiffer, who he later married and wrote A Farewell to Arms during. He rinsed and repeated as he was unfaithful to Pauline, beginning a relationship with a reporter named Martha Gellhorn, who he married, ran off to Spain with, and wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls. After that he divorced Gellhorn, and married a woman (his last) by the name Mary Welsh. He wrote The Old Man and the Sea.
It was said (and I don't remember where) that Hemingway needed a new woman for every book that he wrote. While it may seem that way because it's exactly what happened––a new woman for every new book––, I don't believe that was necessarily the case. Thinking back on it now, and thinking about all that I've read about Hemingway in both The Paris Wife and Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, Hemingway let emotion drive his work. Which leads me to think that Hemingway didn't need a new woman for every novel that he wrote, but he needed a new feeling of despair for every book that he wrote. His life was tumultuous, to say the least, and it got harder for him every time that he got a new wife and left his previous one. However, I think––as much as it tortured him––that despair he craved, and it was that pain that drove his art.
This seems true for a lot of writers. Emotion (notably the negative ones) seem to promote a lot of work, especially rigorous schedules for that. When we feel upset, saddened, or a little fatalist, we tend to get stagnant. We don't want to do anything, sometimes don't even want to get out of bed. But we do, and we write. It's what we do. Yet, sometimes we don't stop to think about how important that emotion is to our work flow.
It can be harnessed. Now, I'm not saying go out there and get all addicted to negative energy unless you want to end up like Hemingway. But when it comes your way, realize the potential in it and look at it as an opportunity.
I've had a shitty week, I'm not going to lie. A lot of stuff I didn't want to happen did, and things I did want to happen didn't. It was a week full of disappointments and discouragement. Rather than brood on it and keep thinking about how bad it was, I decided to put all my effort into writing, into spending time in another world. The emotion drove me to write more, and the more engaged I got into my work; that resulted in a better-written story, not surprisingly. Spending more time and giving more attention to your writing will do that. Sure, I did write it because I didn't want to think about what happened, and that's my own problem I have to deal with, but it drove the work. It fueled the writing.
Some of the most beautiful work has been created in turbulent times. That's why we hear a lot about veterans of World War I (or other conflicts and wars) becoming writers. They have this pain and this emotion that they can put into beautiful work. Fitzgerald continued to create work, and a lot of it, when things were at their worst in his troubled marriage. His work was laden with that instability in his life, but it was written beautifully and still is popular today. There's a great many works created off of negative emotion.
It's as simple as getting up to write when you begin to put yourself in a dark place. When the bad memories are starting to settle in, and you're beginning to feel that laziness borne out of despair/sadness, you should get up and move to the desk to write. Most of the time it'll work (sometimes it won't). And when you write, problems that exist in your real life will find their way into your work and sometimes, as I have found personally, you can write through your problem. You can figure it out through your character going through the same thing.
Emotions drive work and negative emotions are extremely powerful. They can be harnessed to create a rigorous schedule, to write a lot, and to write powerful work. It's a nice way of looking at "bad" things that happen to you. While they may be unfortunate, it's an opportunity to write more, to be more invested in your work, and help you to drive your work forward. It's an opportunity, and one you should take. Negative emotion can be given a positive spin.