Writing As “Revenge Against Circumstance”
By: Kayla Vokolek
Tags: Illumination, Mental Health, Writing

Writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance too: bad luck, loss, pain. If you make something out of it, then you’ve no longer been bested by these events. — Louise Glück

My automatic response to isolation, heartbreak, and even awkwardness is to write. A few of my worst memories were followed with a relatively blithe thought: Well, at least this will be great for my writing. Pain and writing seemed like a simple case of cause-and-effect. The day after I rightly guessed things were soon to be over with my ex, I started a third draft of a story and wrote about 14 pages — by far the most I’ve ever written creatively in one day. Right now, I’m about 38 pages into the fourth draft, and I don’t think I ever would have began rewriting this old story of mine without such a burst of passionate energy in the wake of my sadness and frustration.

So first hearing my belief described much more eloquently by 2003 Poet Laureate Louise Glück felt validating. It captured some of my motivation to write in the first place as well as my sense of fulfillment with projects dealing with difficult personal subjects. Writing has always felt like a refuge to me, a medium to try to make sense of a world that sometimes feels cruel or unwelcoming or just confusing, an activity that not only permits vulnerability and honesty and emotional complexity but also demands such qualities in many cases.

But my attitude toward writing after I read that quote began to feel obsessive, for the wrong reasons. In the isolation and frustration that inevitably follows graduating right before a pandemic, recession, and tumultuous election year, coupled with personal setbacks, I removed some of my pleasure from the act of writing by trying to make it the one salvation to everything that had gone astray. Glück isn’t wrong, by any means, but hyper-fixation on certain aspects of this idea can be dangerous. Primary focus when writing from a place of pain, at least long-term, should be on the writing itself, not the pain. That might sound obvious. However, it can be easy to put the bad on some kind of pedestal. I feel unnecessary pressure when drawing from those sensitive places in writing, helplessly feeling as though inability to rework bad circumstances into anything publishable and of quality made my pain truly irredeemable. And I found myself perpetuating negative thinking of myself and the future, so that I could be sealed into a cyclical fate that would supposedly maximize my creative potential.

And fixating on pain as being what will redeem my writing begins to glamorize suffering of “tortured artists,” a mindset I don’t think I’m alone in perpetuating. Van Gogh is synonymous with mentally ill artists, and lots of misinformation and speculation over his life floats around. But an idea that seems to be pretty prevalent is that perhaps he was such a singular artist because he was just “wired differently,” not despite his debilitating mental illness.

Hannah Gadsby, art history graduate and comedian, addressed this idea in a show, mentioning how one man told her not to take her antidepressants as an artist because “if Vincent van Gogh had have taken medication, we wouldn’t have the sunflowers.” She countered that “perhaps…we have the sunflowers precisely because…van Gogh medicated,” pointing out he had several psychiatrists and medications. One of these psychiatrists treated him with foxglove, which can cause one to experience the color yellow intensely.

“I don’t think it was pain that made [Vincent van Gogh] great — I think his painting brought him whatever happiness he had.” — David Lynch, filmmaker and painter

Sunflowers, Arles, January 1889; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Sure, painting is creatively different in some ways from writing, and I don’t think anyone is taking foxglove nowadays. But I think the main point remains: artists are not meant to be mere vessels of pain. And while having a different mental outlook could potentially make you more inclined toward unique creative expression, it would be a lot more difficult to write The Great American Novel if too depressed to even get out of bed.

I might also add that when misfortune comes your way, writing about it is clearly a healthy and effective way to process it and improve your craft. But it’s also okay if your hardships don’t lead to an obvious increase in frequency, passion, or strength in your writing. It’s impressive enough to merely grapple with something traumatic or heartbreaking.

If you are writing about it though, this piece on addressing traumatic events was incredibly helpful for me, with its suggestion of writing a first draft that includes every messy and triggering aspect, and then rewriting it until the trauma is no longer uncomfortably raw for other readers. Pouring out all your feelings while eventually moving past it enough to step back emotionally allows for both catharsis as well as strong writing. While this practice is good advice on its own in creating a specific scene, it could also be applied toward writing in general. To move past heartache in your creative pursuits, it’s important to allow each draft to gradually develop with your emotional growth, instead of feeling like the entire project is dependent on the pain that preceded it, or that might come later.

Which isn’t contradictory to what Glück was saying in any way. But it can be easy to fixate on the wrong details of her wisdom in a society that usually doesn’t financially support writers — prompting feelings that you must endure any emotional/personal cost in order to achieve the rarity of success — and that doesn’t treat mental illness with the appropriate consideration.

Going forward, I won’t minimize my struggles as “good for my writing” without taking time to process my feelings, or think that I deserve or am destined to have my bad days as a creative. But loss and misfortune are of course part of life. And when they come, I’ll be better equipped to address them, personally and creatively, with the reminder that although some of my best work can come from inevitable hardship, it’s okay too if such writing primarily serves my own emotional catharsis and doesn’t get published, if my inclusion of difficult experiences doesn’t make the final draft, or if I need a little break from writing in order to regain my agency in an activity I love more than nearly anything.