Changing Your Mood

I'm always amazed at the power that writing has over us. Good writing can change our moods from anything to anything else. Happy to sad, angry to joyous, etc. There are a few stories that always stick into my head.

The first one, which is also the oldest, takes place with me and my family in the car. We're driving somewhere and I am just in a rotten mood. As we drive, my mom points out an area and says, "that's a college that caters to the deaf. I think it's pronounced Dee-Yoo-Vill." Without even thinking, I answer back, "if it's a school for the deaf, it doesn't really matter how it's pronounced, does it?" Everybody in the car starts laughing. They are laughing so genuinely that it actually makes me start laughing.

The second story is a bit of a downer, but is just as important an example. I was hanging out with one of my writer friends. We're chatting, reminiscing, and catching up with each other. At one point, my friend hands me a couple of papers and says to read it. I say sure, kick my feet up, and start reading through it. The story happens to be about a woman recalling her childhood. The memories were horrific, the kinds of things nightmares and emotional scars are made of. My smile and joviality quickly faded as I read through the two pages of narrative. When I finished, all I could think about was how devastating the whole thing was.

For my last story, let me explain my writing process a bit. I generally write in one of two situations. Usually, I write in the late night in my room. I have all the lights off, save the glow of my computer screen. Other times, I will walk over to my local coffee shop (well, one of the 8 or 9 in a two-block radius) with a spiral notebook or two and do that during the afternoon. What is common in both of those is that I have music running. Most of my music is not what you would call happy. Since I usually listen to music while writing, my collection is mostly slow, soft, and a little down. It's nice because it's pleasant and not distracting, but sometimes it really puts me into a funk. The irony, though, is that when I'm at the coffee shop, I'm usually writing comics. Many times, I will be feeling depressed, and then the perfect punchline pops into my head and I start laughing. I then proceed to write out a few comics, all of which are making me laugh just to think about, all while listening to depressing music.

It is amazing that reading and writing can do all of these things to me. There is one important factor in all three of those stories, though. They were all good pieces of writing. Average or mediocre writing can also change your mood, but it always changes it to boredom ("this is so uninteresting"), depression ("how come nobody can write anything that doesn't suck?"), or anger ("how come nobody can write anything that doesn't suck?!"). If you can write something that changes a person's mood in a good way, that is a strong sign that you have made powerful writing. Find out how and why it was effective and try to put that into everything you write.