Member-only story
Writing Will Always Love You
But you must use it to deal with your emotions
Have you ever heard of painter’s block? Well, neither have I.
When a painter is sad, he paints a dark landscape. When a dancer feels lonely, she expresses it in her moves. When a singer is furious, he sings an angry song. And when the pianist’s heart is broken, he plays a melody to weep for.
When a writer is sad, angry, frustrated, or depressed, she watches Netflix and binge-eats ice cream. See what went wrong here?
Instead of processing her feelings in her art, she buried them. That’s nothing to be proud of and she knows it, so she drowns the shame in something else. Food. Sex. Entertainment. That’s the writer’s vicious cycle.
But why isn’t this cycle being equally vicious to other artists? Why is writer’s block such a unique problem? Why aren’t there articles upon articles about musician’s dilemma, singer’s dry throat, and painter’s brushphobia? Is writing really that much harder? Of course not.
It’s not that writing is special among the arts. It’s that, from a young age, we’re taught writing isn’t an art at all. That it’s not meant to process feelings. For some reason, it’s plain-as-day obvious that painting, singing, and dancing can’t possibly happen without emotion, yet writing is filed…
