Comments on: Blood of a Lazarus Heart

By: Beth Abelseth

Beth Abelseth — Tue, 18 May 2010 01:16:02 +0000

My writing started when I was depressed. I was always good at it and I always enjoyed it, but I didn’t start DOING it until I was battling depression in high and had to let it out somehow before I started hurting myself. I wrote about a girl who ended up fighting a dragon in another world while trying to redefine herself and I recognized that it represented all of the issues that I was fighting and dealing with at the time and I wrote it that way on purpose. Writing that story helped me find and create the answers I needed and that story became a part of me and will always remain part of me. Everything I have written since then has gotten better and better whether I was depressed or not. I think that good writing is writing that makes the reader feel something. You’re not describing an emotion to the reader, you’re creating an emotion in the reader. I think that writing when you’re depressed can help with that, because that emotion can be so potent and overpowering that it leaks into your writing in such a way that whoever reads it will feel it.

Now let me add that this post made me tear up. These words create the emotions of love, loss, hope, and something stronger than hope: a firm knowledge that the future will be better than the present. In talking about a parent’s heart toward a child and child’s heart toward a parent, you reached into the reader and touched an ache we all share that comes from that relationship with our parents and our children. I hope I can write my characters so that they’re as real as this post is.

By: Allison

Allison — Mon, 17 May 2010 23:47:22 +0000

Your best writing is your unfiltered writing.

I agree, and I’m trying to get into that place mentally again.

I’m specifically referring to you(r writing)…not the general ‘you’ that could apply to anyone.

Thank you. I appreciate that compliment on both the personal and general level. Coming from someone who’s writing I greatly admire, that means a lot.

By: Oregon Sunshine (Mrs Bad Pants)

Oregon Sunshine (Mrs Bad Pants) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:38:51 +0000

So, you’ve just acknowledged and put the real focus where the real issue has been all along? Good. Because, I know it was never ME. But hearing you acknowledge that your issues are YOUR issues is good.

AS for the flaws in the author’s correlation causation, I probably didn’t explain his thoughts well. After all, I only read you 3 paragraphs, not the whole book. AND I was tired. Both of those make a difference.

By: Oregon Sunshine (Mrs Bad Pants)

Oregon Sunshine (Mrs Bad Pants) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:30:35 +0000

I finished reading the book I was working on today. You know, the dog one. Anyways, while the book was about dogs, the author also talked about finding himself mired in his own depression and how writing and his creativity increased during that time and yet helped him climb back out of it. I’ll find you the direct quote later tonight.

It’s a good quote, I might use it in an upcoming blog post. For me, one of my interesting challenges is defining what makes my writing “good” and the intense need I have to produce “good” writing as opposed to the stuff I think is mediocre…and how depression or the lack of depression affects that. I don’t think depression makes my writing good, but there does seem to be a corollary between times when I self-identify as depressed and the times when I produce more “good” stuff overall. BUT, “correlation does not imply causation,” so there’s a basic flaw in that thought process.

I think you resist writing and blogging because of me and the past. However, this isn’t the past and we aren’t the same people as then. All is well. All will be well. The sun will continue to rise and Joe will continue to crow just to annoy you for a while longer yet.

Certainly, our dynamic prevented me from writing in the past; but after a LOT of thought about this subject, I’ve come to some (different) conclusions that I’m going to talk about in my next post. I don’t think the past controls my internal voice like it did a year ago…now it’s an entirely different issue, which really has nothing to do with anyone other than ME. Which is good, because at lest I can address the ME issues directly.

By: Taoist Biker

Taoist Biker — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:39:15 +0000

Added: Not that that keeps me from hiding things much of the time.

By: Taoist Biker

Taoist Biker — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:38:39 +0000

I find myself without a fraction of the time it would take to properly address this post, so I hope to embed it in my addled brain to come back and do so later.

In the meantime, I will say “ditto” to Crisitunity. And add that generally I’ve found that the more open I am about the things I would instinctively hide, the more surprised I’ve been by the understanding from those who receive it.

By: crisitunity

crisitunity — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:32:52 +0000

I write a great deal more when I’m depressed. In general I find that people who are in a depression are feeling self-involved (and I say that with no judgment about good or bad; it just is), and when I get like that, everything spills over into blogging and fiction and not-at-all-concealed nonfiction.

Just let it out, the bad feelings, the struggle against the bad feelings, the struggle against the struggle. Stop worrying about it. What people think of your writing really has very little to do with your writing, especially in a form like this, where it hasn’t been selected by a committee and sterilized by editors.

Also, and here I’m not trying to be offensive about your work, it’s just a blog, baby. It’s not going to be read at the UN. I think you’re letting this worry you way too much, and I think that’s why you’ve posted so little here at your new home.

So why are you muzzling yourself? Ask yourself that. Write about that.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 01:53:41 +0000

There’s no doubt in my mind that you’ve thrown aside your anonymity for this post. It was real. Passionate. Raw. And simply splendid.