Watching the State of the Union depressed the shit out of me.
Let’s be honest, everything about the world right now depresses the shit out of me. Tens of thousands of people (including tens of thousands of children) are dying in Gaza. People who need abortion access cannot receive it. Couples who need IVF to expand their families cannot access it. A psychopath stands to win the Republican presidential nomination, and very possibly the presidency as well. The climate apocalypse descends upon our heads like a vengeful god.
And through it all, I churn away on my book because the deadline’s in April and one day, maybe, eventually, if anyone still feels like reading books anymore by 2025, someone might pick this one up and enjoy it.
What’s the point?
I wonder sometimes how much of my depression is just a blunt, no-rose-tinted-glasses-here gaze upon reality.
I feel like my last books were all pretty angsty and occasionally grim. But my current book, The Love Variations? I keep trending toward light.
Which doesn’t actually work for this book, which is also supposed to be angsty? So why am I here dithering about in the romance-only bits instead of exploring the deeper aspects of the characters and their story?
Maybe it’s that I need a break from real life.
So why keep writing?
Why keep writing, when everything is miserable and sucks and fatalistic?
I guess because I can’t stop myself. Writing’s been something I’ve done since forever. Since my first stupid Oregon Trail novella in elementary school to the vampire books me and my best friend cowrote during middle school class (squeezed three lines to one line-rule in our notebooks, a talent fomented by our Latin teacher’s rule that you could bring one index card of notes to exams - yes, we literally brought loupes to school for this purpose). Then NaNoWriMo novels about angels and demons, fanfic, and finally back to original fiction with the book that would become The Fever King.
Is it harder to write books now that I’m getting paid for them? Weirdly, yes.
But write them I do. Compulsively, passionately, helplessly.
And maybe someone’ll actually read them.
"I wonder sometimes how much of my depression is just a blunt, no-rose-tinted-glasses-here gaze upon reality."
Oof--that hit hard.
“I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can’t be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.” – Sylvia Plath
This quote has always stuck with me when I think about why I write. "I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living." What a weighty sentence! I suppose I feel both similarly and differently. In my eyes, life is simply too beautiful ˆnotˆ to write. And so I do.