Beyond Catharsis:Different Writing Styles

[New]

For several years of my life, I was living with anxiety and depression, which led to a lot of thoughts I wasn't entirely comfortable with. This led me to turn to poetry as a form of capturing those demons, in order to come to terms with who I was. Writing was a way to filter life so as to make it beautiful, even in darkest times.

But that changed recently. I've fully realized my mental disorders which enabled the doctors to prescribe medications that, frankly, turned my life around. My nights became days, my hells became chances, and my mind, once scattered and shorted, truly became free. In effect, my fuel for my passion went away. I don't need a cathartic poetry method because these feelings I experience now are not ones that I want to be rid of.

Which leads me to my question. What other reasons are there to write besides relief, and could you share them with everybody? I'm sure that I'm not the only writer that could benefit from the answers.

 

[Raz]

Good question!!

I totally know where you're coming from too.....writing used to be a very cathartic release thing for me too when I was in a bad place, and I don't write as much now as I used to because I don't need to...

I guess now other reasons to write are to celebrate good things or memorialise things or even just as an exercise in writing style...

It can definitely be a difficult thing to get used to though.

 

[(Wordy)]

Sometimes the reason for writing comes after the fact. Sometimes you have to write to find the reason.

I totally hear you though, New. I came to writing for similar reasons: depression and anxiety were/are bugbears for me too. And even if you feel free from them, maybe you can still draw upon them as sources for writing: they are part of your source(code).

I often find it's only after years have passed that I can write about events with any kind of perspective. Writing can be a way of coming to terms with the past. Sometimes we have to let things go to see them. Although, I'm not suggesting we shouldn't write about what's happening while it's happening - far from it. Writing in the thick of the storm can be your navigation.

It's definitely worth questioning your reasons for writing at different stages along the path. A question I've been grappling with lately, each time I write, is whether the act of writing is one of selfishness, or selflessness. Usually it's a mixture of the two.

And: I write because I have to.

 

[echo off]

Apart from some of the reasons mentioned I also like to write sometimes just to capture an idea i had. most of my personal spiritual/philosophical developments are not quite developments, but if i wrote them down i can see what i was thinking wrong, and where i was thinking right.

its good to capture the good moments too. you could argue that i'm just storing writing for later relief, but it tends to be used later to amplify happiness instead.

as for the writing for relief, for me it also tends to be a way of making the bad look good. making something that makes me feel stupid understandable to anybody allows me to put the shit behind me. i could just be excusing myself in a way that's hard to argue though.

 

[Toltecsuperhero]

for me writing has almost always been chthartic, and the release is an amazing and addictive thing, but I've found lately that my words are as much a door out of me as a door into me, I've been writing longer pieces and more fictionally than ever. I used to thing that all i could write honestly was myself, but these days I use my writing to try to get into other people, places, and especially things (Tom Robbins would be proud) and it's been a whole new kind of expression. There's still a form of release, but how can there not be when the words I'm writing are coming out of me and into the world. I am fast becoming a literary birth canal, heh, heh. But words mean something new to me nearly every day, whether I write or just think, or read. I think it's the words I love more than the release. They're mine and everyone else's at the same time. I think during my self-centered writings (literally, writings with myself at the center) when it felt the most cathartic I felt the most possessive of the words I was using and now I feel more like giving them all away.
But maybe I don't know. Hell, tomorrow I might get on here ranting about how I want all my words back along with the releases they brought, who knows. All I know is that the words mean more than my reactions to them.