I am not depressed!
There, I got that
out there. I know my last few posts have
leaned toward the negative side but that does not mean I am depressed. No mother, I am not taking medication. No Aunt Laverne, I am not standing on the
edge of a cliff. I have merely been
sitting at my writing desk trying to pound out my latest story.
I fear that
negativity is a hazard of the job.
I Googled “depressed
writer” and I came up with 7,170,000 hits.
That’s a lot of depression. Seriously!
Ernest Hemingway,
John Keats, Proust and Mark Twain were all rumored to have suffered from
depression. A quick search of “writers
who committed suicide” yielded over 400 names including greats such as Virginia
Woolf, Hunter S. Thompson and Sylvia Plath.
There is quite a
bit of internet space dedicated to why so many writers are susceptible to
depression. Theories from lack of
exercise to lack of a steady income to insupportable loneliness exist. My good friends at Quirk and Quill recently wrote a blog on just this topic.
It is true that I
could stand to exercise more, that I have yet to earn a penny from writing and
my wife would certainly support the fact that I spend too much time alone at
the computer. But I am not depressed.
I have made a
pact to be more positive. I even Googled
‘happy writer’ for advice. Here is what I found:
FINISH YOUR S***! - Chuck
Wendig
Don’t quit your day job -
Nathan Bransford
Okay, so perhaps
the uplifting isn’t so uplifting after all.
My point here
being… writing is full of self-doubt. As
a writer I constantly second guess what I am writing. I accept this fact. It is what I have chosen to do. It doesn’t mean I am moving to Key West to
drink beer and sleep with cats.
In fact, today I
plan to make a large glass of lemonade, turn the baseball game on the radio and
write the next chapter of my novel. Life
is pretty good if you ask me.
