NaNoWriMo and the Blues

6 CommentsMental Illness
It's one of those days. I'm blue, but I'm smiling.

It’s one of those days. I’m blue, but I’m smiling.

So, I’ve called upon the age old power to defeat depression: Writing.

Every great depressed person did shit with their depression, and it usually involved words. The standard for NaNoWriMo is for you to write 1,666 words each day. I typed 11,250 words yesterday. It meant that someone else (read: Jenny) had to make my food, and cut up my apple. She also boiled water for my tea, but I didn’t ask her to do that.

In any case, I used my depression to kick ass on my book yesterday.

 

NaNoWriMo total of 35,150/50,000.

Goal for novel: 150,000 words.  I’m more than 1/5th of the way done. Whoo!

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6 Comments

  1. K

    I, too, am trying writing as therapy for depression. So far it’s working really well, although I’ve discovered I have an aversion to conflict. That sort of ruins a plot. Wish me luck and good luck to you!

  2. zooey

    I use writing to define what I am feeling when depressed. It helps me find ways to cope. The feedback from friends is invaluable as well. Writing is a great way to just get-it-out. 🙂

  3. Amy Purdy

    Way to go on the word count! Writing has always proved to be a wonderful therapy for me. It seems like I do my best writing (both in quality and quantity) when I am in a dysphoric mania. Depression alone just kind of flattens out all my creativity, although if I force it out of myself I often look back and realize it wasn’t quite as terrible as I thought at the time. The thing I love most about NaNoWriMo is that it helped me just pump out the story without my usual self-critic attacking every word I wrote. It’s very freeing!

    • Rory

      Agreed. It’s refreshing to put my inner judgement aside and just write, without obsessing over content.

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