As a romance writer, I struggle to be creative when I am angry, scared, and hurt. While I firmly believe that these emotions ultimately need to be enveloped in true romance, I also believe they do not lend themselves to the most romantic moments of our lives.
Allow me to illustrate: When one is angry with one’s partner they tend to fight. However, the mending from those arguments lends toward healing and closeness, building better understanding and stronger relationships. It is in the moment of anger that there seems to be distance, not after.
As an author, I am struggling with the proverbial distance from my sense of internal romance. I am angry with the society around me which is blocking me from the muse which helps to inspire my creativity. I am angry with the people, the community, and the country in which I live. It astonishes me that this place, the place that I love, and which has been the backdrop for so much of the romance I have believed in, has chosen to hate people. This stifles my creativity.
So, I pause and ask, how do we as authors write through anger?
I remind myself of a quote that has returned to me over and over. It is from Desmond Tutu. “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together”. I keep replaying these words in my mind. I am struggling to identify just how they fit into my writing. I feel their power and know that they fit into my world. I have begun to slowly work through all of my old writing exercises like freeform writing, one-page expression stories, and other craft-building skills that my old professor had me doing. I pick a topic and try to build a short story around it, 500 words or less. I have even tried to write a story inspired by Desmond Tutu’s quote. I am certain there is meaning there for me, and us.
As I process all of this, I also recall my own words about democracy. I had a conversation with my brother about our Constitution. I still believe that our Constitution was an amazingly influential and important document. I also agree with him that it is inherently flawed and dated. I think several types of documents need to be considered when we look at written works: living, creative, historical, to name a few. I would argue that documents such as the Constitution, and even perhaps the Bible with the way some choose to use it, should fall in the category of a living document. Living documents should never be left unchanged. People and societies are not stagnant. To this end, we cannot live by the same guidelines that a society of 100 years ago was designed to live. Yes, that is why we have governments that pass laws and rules that change. But when those laws are held to a standard that does not change, we have a fundamental flaw.
Yet I am not a literary scholar. I am a creative author who worries about these things when they have a direct impact on my livelihood and me as a person. So, to return to my foundational question, how do I write through anger? I do not have an answer. I continue to work through this block. I beseech others with this struggle to share their thoughts. It is my hope that we, as a community of writers, readers, and people of literary interest, can work together to influence our political leaders to find some sense of decency and reason.
So, I go back to the beginning. I am a romance writer. I am a romantic. From these roots, I find hold and work to find my creativity. As authors there will always be times when we struggle to work the creative into the daily writing process. We may not love the words that spring forth onto the page. I believe it is important that we keep working through the struggles. For me writing is cathartic. It is the process by which I find solace, logic, and order in the mayhem in which we live. Perhaps this is the inspiration, this is how we write through the anger. Perhaps this is the path back to writing the romance and the joy that brought me to the pen in the beginning.
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