Here is a gentle reminder to check in on your mental health.
I’m sure that every writer is familiar with the pre-posting stage where you can produce content freely and take pride in your work. I’m sure everyone is also familiar with the immediately-post-posting stage, where all those positive thoughts go out of the window and you’re convinced that /this/ is the fic that nobody will like. You don’t need an armchair psychologist like me to tell you how damaging that can be on self esteem, or how it can feed unnecessary anxiety.
But what you might forget to keep in mind every once in a while is to watch out for the content of your work.
If you find yourself wanting to channel hours upon hours into angsty fics with difficult subject matters, then sometimes it might be good to question why. If every depiction of your favourite characters, or the ones that you align with the most, seem to have underlying mental health conditions, then ask yourself where the urge to write like this comes from.
If this is something your consciously aware of, then brilliant! Keep working on yourself and writing your characters as they come to you naturally! But sometimes (if you’re like me and completely oblivious) you might need to stare something dead in the eye before it makes sense to you.
The reason I’m making this slightly disjointed post is that last year I found myself in the same position. Every version of a character that I found myself relating to was the same - cold, depressed, lonely. Now, I wasn’t completely oblivious. I knew I was channeling myself. But what I didn’t realise was that I was massively damaging my own mental health in the process. Because when you’re writing about a character with the same problems as yourself, you can also write about how you fix them. And as the idiom (sort of) goes, it’s easier written than done.
Gradually, I began questioning my own feelings of self worth. ‘If [fictional character] can get over her problems, then why can’t I? When is my turning point? Where’s my second act?’. It took far too long for me to realise the position I was putting myself in. The unrealistic expectations I set for myself, that only fed my anxiety further. I stopped writing when I realised this, and it took me a year to pick up the courage to return. There are still some fics that I can’t bring myself to read.
I guess the morale of this weird ass post is to look after yourself. Don’t be afraid to question your own decisions. Don’t write things that make you anxious or afraid or upset. And, what a lot of people might not want to hear, writing won’t fix everything. Sometimes it feels like you can channel your negative emotions into a piece of work and they will disappear.
I can promise you they won’t.
