Resources and Advice for Depressed Authors
- Four Tips for Writing When You Are Depressed: Exactly what it says on the tin.
- If routines help you, but you struggle to establish one with writing, you may just be expecting too much. Set an intentionally small goal, whatever that may look like for you, but then focus on reaching that goal every day. You may discover that when you aim for a light word count each day, you are able to overshoot your goal on many days, but still be able to reach it on the worst days. This in turn makes it easier to avoid self-judgement if you’re still working on the whole treating-yourself-kindly thing. Avoid sharing the specifics of this goal with people, especially people who write easily and people who have overblown confidence in your abilities as a writer, because nothing takes the accomplishment out of writing every day for 3 weeks in a row for the first time in your life like your dad saying, “Only xxx words a day?”
- Why Writers are Prone to Depression: a discussion of several famous depressed authors, some theories about why authors are disproportionately likely to be depressed, and some lifestyle choices that could potentially help a little.
- “’Getting’ Yourself to Write” - an entreaty to stop and consider why you might be avoiding writing in the first place, a criticism of writing advice that focuses only on developing unquestioning self-discipline, some advice for treating yourself kindly as an author, and one of the most mindful Tumblr posts I have ever read. A round of snaps for @wrex-writes, everybody.
- Why You Should Let Your First Draft Suck and some advice for getting your inner critic to shut up and get on with it until you can at least finish the first draft.
- Why You Don’t Need To Worry About Hating Your Own Work: some potential explanations for why you hate your own work, and some ways to re-contextualize it.
- How to Stay on Task: This is, technically, a guide for adults with ADD, not authors with depression, but I for one seem to have developed the concentration of a goldfish as some sort of bizarre coping mechanism for dealing with di/stress, so I believe it may be helpful anyway.
- Try writing in 15- to 20-minute bursts.
- 10 Affirmations for Creative Writers: Some basic writing affirmations, how affirmations work, and some advice to creating your own specific affirmations. (In addition to their tips, here’s one from me: the subconscious doesn’t respond to negations, so phrase your affirmations in ways that avoid words like “not” or “don’t.” For example, “I can stay on task!” will work better than “I won’t be distracted!”)
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That’s it for now. Y’all know the drill: If you have moderate to severe depression, seeking a good therapist and possibly taking medication are the best things that you can do to manage your depression. Still, I don’t know how much writing-specific advice general therapists can give. I’ve never asked.
Also, even if you’re not clinically depressed, or don’t know if you’re depressed, these resources may still be helpful to you if you, too, want to write but have difficulty concentrating, lose motivation halfway through all your projects, and/or hate your own work despite previous excitement or positive feedback…. which all lowkey sound like symptoms of depression to me tbh, but who am I to label you when I can’t even confidently label myself? So go forth and accept yourselves and your work, darlings, and add on to this if you want because Azar knows I need the help too! <3
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