Susan Jane Gilman once
gave a TED Talk on
how anger inspires creativity. Writer Abroad agrees. In fact, many of her
pieces in the last few years (Vox,
Vice,
New
York Times) were inspired by anger. Anger fueled her writing and essays flowed. But now she's at a loss. Now she's answering the question: What happens when your anger is no longer inspiring?
Writer
Abroad has now reached a point where she's beyond being angry. In fact, she’s so upset at the direction of the
United States that she almost can’t write about it any longer. She’s been in a place
of creative anger for over three years now (since returning to the U.S.), and
for her, the anger has run its course.
The reality that
nothing good (at least politically and policy-wise) will happen for the next
few years—no matter what piece she gets published or not—has her in a writing
slump.
Now she’s numb. Now
she can hardly listen to the news. Now she’s got writer’s block. This is
probably what the current leaders of the U.S. want. And she doesn’t want to
succumb to them, but she is slowly succumbing to the endless deranged mental
state that is life in 2017 America.
She’s also trying to
be kind to herself. Trying to give herself a few months break from writing
about everything that’s wrong in order to feel creatively all right. Because the
reality is, outside of the decline of her country, her life is going fine. Take away the noise from the media, from
the outside world asking her what the heck is going on here, from the voices in her head
wondering if she made a huge mistake by moving back to this disaster waiting-to-happen when she was in a much more stable and reasonable country before–even if it wasn't her real home.
So for the next few
months, there might be some quiet going on here, at least in the creative anger
arena, as Writer Abroad focuses on some business writing and strategic work in order to
remain somewhat sane.
Because Writer Abroad knows anger is a powerful creative tool. And she wants to give
the anger room to return. And she hopes for the sake of her creativity, that it
does.
Can anyone else
relate?