I realised last night that writing is good for my mental health.
This is a statement that a lot of writers will find odd, so let me explain.
After a bad retail experience while doing my grocery shopping amid the chaos of Christmas Eve, I felt anxious, and was considering abandoning my plans for the evening. Lately, though, I’ve found that I hold myself to the standards of the characters in my books, and they would definitely have faced the fear and gone ahead; so I did too.
Which is funny, because I’m very aware that the characters in my books are drawn out of elements of myself. So I used a part of myself to motivate myself to be better than I am.
I write noblebright fantasy, which means that my leading characters exhibit courage, perseverance, and kindness to a greater degree than most real people (though certainly there are real people like that). In using them as my model, I’m strengthening the best aspects of myself.
But it doesn’t just work that way. I’ve heard that horror writers are generally extraordinarily nice people, and I suspect that it’s because they draw out the darker parts of themselves into the light, externalise them so that they’re no longer driven by them unawares – and perhaps so that they have a clear model to steer away from, as I have one to steer towards in my more noble characters.
So, in summary: pay attention to the voices in your head. It can improve your mental health.
Mike Reeves-McMillan lives in Auckland, New Zealand, the setting of his Auckland Allies contemporary urban fantasy series; and also in his head, where the weather is more reliable, and there are a lot more wizards. He also writes the Gryphon Clerks series (steampunk/magepunk), the Hand of the Trickster series (sword-and-sorcery heist capers), and short stories which have appeared in venues such as Compelling Science Fiction and Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores.
Not weird at all, not so much the voices 🙂 just the mere creativity. Being creative is always mental-healthy.
When I was young and sad, I’d play my guitar and cheer myself up. We taught our son to do the same, his weapon of choice is the saxophone 🙂
It always annoyed me that a friend who did “woodwork therapy” for patients completely underestimated the good he was doing simply by getting them to make stuff.
Creativity is incredibly powerful. You can do it any time and it has no nasty side-effects.