WRITER’S MISERIES AND NIGHTMARES: EMOTIONAL BREAKDOWN

The most electrifying and interesting part of a writer's life is to hold his or her hardcopy published book on his or her hand, to read or to show some friends and family members and relations. This means a lot to many writers out there. Some have not gotten to this level while some have. Some dream day and night to make sure that their works are published; in a situation where a write has gone far and wide to make sure his or her work is published but to no avail, he or she is broken and emotionally disturbed. Emotional breakdown is not a good thing for any writer of any such. We all fight to make money through what we do, we strive and thrive to be better than who we were yesterday and when all these things are not forth coming or when they are not paying off, it makes a writer weary of writing, it breaks him or her. They become discouraged; they become disturbed, broken and dejected. Emotional breakdown is real, it is not a myth; writers encounter it.

Works rejected by magazines can break down a writer. He has in one way or the other put more efforts and time to make sure that the work comes out fine but at the end of the day, it is rejected by magazines, publishers and many others who cannot in one way or the other encourage them as writers. You see, your poems and stories, even articles all have a source. They come from somewhere; somewhere that you don’t really know. Your muse directly knows how to make you feel. Nothing you write or comes out from your head is entirely fictitious. The characters and subject of your story might be out of the blue, you might wake up to ideas in your head but they are being aided by your life experiences: Situations you have been through, places you have been to, people you have met, books you have read, the lyrical content of the songs you listen to every day, movies you have watched, the kind of things you observe while walking down the road and so on. These things work together to formulate and create new ideas inside you. And that is what, after completion, you regard to as fiction. However, after spending much of your time creating all these things, someone somewhere would reject it but the truth of the matter is that, it is not their fault; they have their lay down standard, their rules and regulation guiding them.

We’ve all heard stories of authors who arrive at writing conferences in their personal helicopters, who own multiple vacation homes, and who get million-dollar book deals; who made it big through their writing career, who are world changers. But realistically, what are the chances that you as a creative writer will join the ranks of writers who are making a ton of money? What are the chances that you stand to make money from what you write or from the book you sell? This is the one of those things that breaks a writer as he dreams and hopes that one day, he would stand to become something in life through what he writes.

Some critics break a writer also. They make him or her feels like a worthless being; they critique unconstructively leaving writers or their work at the mercy of their own. It is not really easy to write. Although these writers’ critics make writers but someway somehow, some of these critics should be frank with what they do. They should be tender with their words. They have made some writers and destroyed some. In Africa, We know most writers don’t become zillionaires. Some are able to make a comfortable living as a writer, but others are not. Today we’re to take a hard look at not just how much money a creative writer can expect to make over the course of his or her career but what messages he or she is able to pass down to his or her readers and how he can be able to change the narrative through what he or she writes.

Writers do break down too. They are emotional too. They feel pains and lose control over some things. They are not strong all the times. They are weak people with emotional instability. Sometimes not all they write is what they represent. There are some distinguish characteristics between what they write and their personalities; they are humans just like you. Their brokenness is as real as HIV and AIDS. And of course it’s a disease too, to
them. The only difference is that it’s unpreventable and unprintable. At some points in your career as a writer, you will feel empty, blank and uninterested about a lot of things. This is probably a proof that you haven’t kept the balance of your input and output system.

Now the more you exhaust this brokenness as a writer, the more your mind becomes disordered, and the weaker the signal strength of your creative imaginations. You can’t produce anything reasonable if you are empty.

So it is better to find a way or an outline of means to overcome these brokenness- Make a useful outline when you are inspired that you cannot be broken no matter what comes on your way, not even money or comments on your work by novice or Elite writers would break you or mare you. Just ignore and move on with your style. Keep your mind afresh always, never allow things which don’t worth a thing to break you- you need your mind for your work, you don’t need to be broken always.

Basically, there are things you just have to ignore or let go. As a beginner or as professional writer; I recommend you keep your mind void of any weird and unnecessary words. Focus mostly on the area that you continually concentrate on, those areas you need to improve and those you need to maintain. This way you can recycle old posts with a new spin that will keep you alive until you get back in the saddle of who you are. Don’t allow anything break you for too long.

© John Chizoba Vincent
#LiquidWords

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