![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Your Writing Mood
Mar. 1st, 2014 07:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarilliaHow does your mood affect your writing? And do you have any methods to get into the mood that makes you most productive?
I always look back on 2010 with a bit of wistful nostalgia because of how much writing I was doing and how much I liked what I wrote. But that's the only part of that year I'm nostalgic for. I was in a really bad place. For a while I thought that I could only be that prolific when I was trying to escape from my crappy life for hours at a time.
Then I remembered how I seem to write best and most productively when I'm in a good mood. Which didn't seem very compatible with my original idea.
Now I'm even more sure that it wasn't my depression that fueled my work because I realized something that made me facepalm when I thought about how I had overlooked it: the time right after that most prolific period of mine was when I picked up other hobbies. I started knitting and started turning into a film buff who watched movies all day. That took up a lot of time that used to go to writing, so of course I didn't get as much writing done.
Now I'm just rambling. But I think I have it figured out.
I still think that element of escapism is there. It helps to want to "live" in the world of my story more than my own life for a little while. So sometimes being depressed might help. But once I start writing, I work best when I'm feeling light and enthusiastic. Or sometimes it helps to be in the same mood as my main character. Seems like it would be difficult to write a death scene while in my bubbly, head-bopping-along-to-fun-music mood. Speaking of music, that sometimes helps put me in the right mood.
So have any of you thought about this at all?
I always look back on 2010 with a bit of wistful nostalgia because of how much writing I was doing and how much I liked what I wrote. But that's the only part of that year I'm nostalgic for. I was in a really bad place. For a while I thought that I could only be that prolific when I was trying to escape from my crappy life for hours at a time.
Then I remembered how I seem to write best and most productively when I'm in a good mood. Which didn't seem very compatible with my original idea.
Now I'm even more sure that it wasn't my depression that fueled my work because I realized something that made me facepalm when I thought about how I had overlooked it: the time right after that most prolific period of mine was when I picked up other hobbies. I started knitting and started turning into a film buff who watched movies all day. That took up a lot of time that used to go to writing, so of course I didn't get as much writing done.
Now I'm just rambling. But I think I have it figured out.
I still think that element of escapism is there. It helps to want to "live" in the world of my story more than my own life for a little while. So sometimes being depressed might help. But once I start writing, I work best when I'm feeling light and enthusiastic. Or sometimes it helps to be in the same mood as my main character. Seems like it would be difficult to write a death scene while in my bubbly, head-bopping-along-to-fun-music mood. Speaking of music, that sometimes helps put me in the right mood.
So have any of you thought about this at all?
