Putting Positive Vibes On Our Pages -- Vonnie Davis

Writing a positive and enjoyable story, whether fiction or non-fiction, is hard when we're in a "blue funk." Sadness comes to us all, in one form or another, sometimes in short duration and sometimes for a season. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions." Don't we all feel like that sometimes? As if we're weighed down with one problem or crisis after another?

Often sadness forms like an odious vapor from within our souls. Then again, it may rain on us from outside sources. Either way, we are affected and sometimes unable to write.

Our creativity becomes a prisoner, encased within the bubble of these morose, unhappy or depressing emotions.

Or is it?

Many songs have been written as a result of a catastrophe in the song writer's life. A lost life of someone held dear or the loss of a love. "Tears in Heaven," for example is a grief-spurred ballad written by Eric Clapton after losing his 4-year-old son, who died upon falling from an apartment window.

Pain can immobilize us or make us sound out, either with music or poetry or prose.

Depression can pull us down into a numbing abyss. Or we can fight like hell to rise above. Either way--succumbing or surviving--is never easy. Both can zap our energies. Both can take a chunk of our souls. However, surviving leads us to the emotional sunlight of healing. And so we keep fighting.

Perhaps we can keep writing, too. Oh, not our current WIP's perhaps, but we can write down our emotions with all it's vivid blues and swirling grays. We can fill the blank computer screen or pristine journals with our disjointed emotional thoughts. A stanza of poetry might surprise us. Or a magazine article. One thing for sure, by writing down our emotions, we create a well of resouce for ourselves.

If I put down my feelings of dispair over a health issue, perhaps. Then one day, months later, when my character is facing something incredibly scary, I can go back to my "Blues File" and pull forth an emotion my character needs.

In otherwords, use your negative emotions for good. Don't deny them, but feel them, taste them, smell them. Allow them to roll around on your hands as you examine them. Paint them honestly on a computer screen or canvas. For one day, they may become something profound on a page. Something that resounds with someone else. Someone who needs a touch of positive reinforcement.