On Writing, Emotions, or Where Anxiety Comes From
A stream of consciousness, with a sprinkle of Sigmund Freud
People have been asking me where I find inspiration for my writing and whether my poetry and prose have been derived from personal experience. It’s a natural question to ask, I suppose, particularly given the very honest and emotive nature of my literary creations. My answer to that is: of course, my personal experience influences my writing, for no other reason than that I was the one who wrote it. However, I don’t write strictly about myself, and it’s an important distinction to understand; I write about the human experience. In fact, this is what I consider my mission and the ultimate literary goal: to synthesize the cornucopia of human emotions and experiences and convey them in words in the most accurate, undistorted way.
It’s hard.
It’s hard because human emotions are incredibly complex and human experiences that impact the formation of those emotions are intricate, and people are different, so it’s possible that one person will react differently to a set of events than the other. Properly portraying this complexity requires not only an excellent mastery of the language but also being completely in touch with yourself and your own feelings. That second requirement quite possibly is even more challenging…
