At one time in my life, I was a very angry person.
Anyone who knows me will probably laugh or roll their eyes at that statement. Because I’m happy now. I’ve changed a lot. I’ve moved to a new place. I’ve changed jobs, and I am now working somewhere where I’m valued as a person and where the work I do matters. I’m happy.
But in that change (which, some may argue, was both healthy and necessary), I lost something. I lost the thing that had for so long fueled my writing.
Anger made me a good writer.
Anger made me passionate. It gave me fuel and made my writing powerful. The world wasn’t the way I wanted it to be, and I was on fire to change it, and change myself. I was desperate, and maybe a little crazy. I wrote for hours at a time.
I miss it.
The creative writing I produce now is good, technically, I guess, but it’s bland. It’s placid. It’s passionless.
I know I’m in a healthier place now, emotionally, but… part of me wants the anger back.
The writer and the struggle.
I realize this is a much larger discussion, but there has always been a strong relationship between art and strife, poetry and pain, revolution and language. Art is a declaration of truth and beauty; an expression of emotion — so do bland emotions make for bland art?
Can a writer be content and still produce writing that’s worth something?
Can I learn how to write from a place of placidity and not that place of anger?
Can I re-learn how to write?
This is what I want to ask you. My life has changed, and the way I write needs to change along with it. But I’m clueless as to how to make that happen.
Where does your passion to write come from? What fuels you and your work?
Let me know. I think you can help.