"How do you write when when you’re happy? Why does it feel like it is only a sad sport?"
But is it, really?
An unedited, small heart-to-heart talk inspired ’s question.
I reflected on this question too much before writing this. Writing is a different hobby, expression, coping mechanism, or celebration for every single person who practices it. No person has the same reasons as another to why or how they write, no matter what. I don't know whether other hobbies have it the same, or is it just something related to language. Something you either lose or gain when you're sad.
To me, I never write when I'm sad. I physically can't. I genuinely lose my tongue and my mind to the void. I wouldn't know how to handle conversations, be witty, or express myself. I'm not a happy person. Passionate, cheeky, warm, and loud. Yes. But I’m not happy, yet my friends know I'm content with living by how much I write. It's their affirmation when I'm isolating myself. If I write, then I can still speak. And if I can still speak, then my mind is not as blank.
Even when my pieces are sad, and nostalgic, and horrific. I never write them in the middle of these emotions. I just wait for them to pass well enough until I can become coherent enough again to write them down. I once wrote about how much I wish I could write in the middle of my sadness, perhaps then I would've made it. But this corner of my work will forever be foreign to me.
I remember someone once tweeted Richard Siken why they can only write when sad, and he replied that the vocabulary of joy is grunts and moans and the vocabulary of sadness is the dictionary.
What about when my dictionary is a bunch of white blank pages? Why did I not get mine in the mail? I can never complain about being lucky enough to write only when I'm feeling better, but part of feeling better is also my mania, and my mania is not consistent. Yet I force myself to find my voice even when I'm sad, but I still wouldn't be content with how it sounds anyway.
But then I remember I once wrote, “I never write about sadness, but always from it.” I believe even when I can't write when I'm sad, my work is still haunted by the scent of it somehow.
Even when I write about lovely emotions like love, sensuality, contentment, and gratitude. I still write like a sad person who experienced any of the above like it's their first time, every single time.
For the past year and a half, I've been writing constantly. Nonstop. It's my most productive year yet, but I'm still not happy. I'm doing it in the middle of an active genocide that I'm personally, heavily impacted by to the point even my writings changed with me.
Have I always been writing out of happiness? No, but I was doing so out of resilience. I was writing so much for the past year because I'm angry (even if I weren't writing about my anger or the genocide), and thankfully enough, that's not the same as sadness.
I don't know where I'm going from here, but it was a “little funny train of thought” for me to ride through as I'm breaking it down. It's interesting to see how writing is seen and interacted with differently depending on who you are and your relationship with it.
thank you for engaging with my question 🥹 this is written so thoughtfully. I posed that question because I feel like I’ve seen other people ask it similarly too before and it’s made me wonder, are there people who write when they’re happy? Are there people who write when they’re so overjoyed with gratitude towards something? I’m sure there are, but for me, I usually write from sadness — that sentence you wrote really resonated with me. I guess I wonder if I can change my relationship with writing too, it is very interesting to see how different peoples relationship with it can be