Face it, writers. Our job is to be unhappy. Writers need unhappiness. Stories need unhappiness. No unhappiness, no story.
But you can’t be unhappy all the time. I have a calendar of Labrador puppies. Every month brings a new, smiling face. Can a dog smile? Anyone who owns one knows the answer to that question.
Puppies, like children, are a necessary part of life. Especially for writers. We need to be reminded things aren’t that bad. Attitude is what counts. Puppies and children remind us the simple life is what counts. We have enough to eat. A place to sleep. Endless opportunities for fun. Most of all, we have each other. What’s the big deal?
Ah, don’t tell them. Not that they’d listen, bless their hearts.
Unhappiness seems to be on a lot of minds. Starting with politics, there are a lot of unhappy people. Which is peculiar, because the less politics affects these people, the more vocal they are. Why are you unhappy, I ask? They recite a litany of pre-packaged complaints, all supplied by their political party. In other words, they were told to be unhappy. I think we can see what’s wrong with that.
People don’t want to feel bad, and most manage to feel pretty good. But just being a writer makes writers unhappy. No one respects them. They have non-writing obligations, there’s never enough time, they don’t feel well. They can’t write, and if they can write, they can’t publish.
Wait a minute, I’m starting to depress myself.
That’s why I have puppies on my wall, and you should too. Plus I know how critical it is to feel bad, or at least understand the usefulness of feeling bad. I’ve adjusted. In good fiction, everyone is trying to ruin everyone else. So to speak, and action, and our interest in a story is the constant friction between feeling bad and feeling good. You write what you know. You can’t slum your way into experience, like that author who writes about working at a warehouse by working in a warehouse. Then six months later throwing away her smock, moving back to Manhattan, and buying a fifteen dollar latte before sitting down to a keyboard. That doesn’t work, and it shows.
You write about working in a warehouse because you worked in a warehouse, you had to, you needed the money. You write about unhappiness because you were unhappy. This is why affluent, happy people make lousy writers. They don’t really know about life. They have to guess.
Don’t guess. Embrace experience, the good and the bad. Especially the bad. Your stories will be infinitely better, and in the end you’ll actually be happier. At least with your writing, and for a real writer, that’s all that matters.
Richard Donnelly lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Classic flyover land. Which makes us feel just a little… superior. He publishes a weekly column of essays on the writing life at richarddonnelly.substack.com