Should You Publish Your Writing When You Have the Blues?
How to go about publishing your writing when you’re feeling down
Something has you down.
Maybe it’s something big like you lost someone you love, or you recently had major surgery. Maybe you lost your job and are struggling to find a new one. Maybe you’ve been sick and are lacking mental clarity. Maybe you’re just sick of subzero temperatures keeping you indoors.
Or maybe you’re suffering from the winter blues. The winter blues are a real struggle millions of Americans face. According to Boston University, it affects an estimated 10 million Americans.
With this changing of the clocks, daylight ends earlier. When this happens, some people may experience emerging feelings of sadness and sluggishness, and fluctuations in weight. If you suffer from these symptoms, you may have seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a type of depression related to changes in the seasons. SAD affects an estimated 10 million Americans, with women four times more likely to be diagnosed with it than men.. — Madeleine O’Keefe, 2019
Wintertime is also a prime time for the seasonal flu and cold, which can elevate SAD because you don’t feel like yourself when you’re sick. Negative thoughts lead to pessimistic writing, and no one likes a Negative Nancy or a Debbie Downer. This often has me asking the question:
“Should I publish these words?”
I’ve written about the importance of writing during the heat of the moment because intense emotions often lead to empowering writing. However, I’ve also written about the consequences of writing with too much emotion.
The first couple weeks of January have been challenging for my family, and I’m not going to lie, it’s hard to keep writing and publishing when my mind is in its current state. We’ve faced several adversities that make 2023 look like an easy year (although it was our hardest).
As I’m writing this, I’ve been sick since Saturday, and my husband spent Martin Luther King, Jr., Day in the hospital because he woke in the early morning and couldn’t breathe. He has asthma that only appears when he’s sick. Getting sick is becoming a life-or-death situation for him, so we will need to start taking extra quarantine precautions when my son brings home daycare bugs.
Every time our family gets sick, my mind heads down dark passages, and it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. However, I know writing will help.
Not all words that are written need to be published. I’ve written plenty of words that will never be viewed by the outside world. It’s perfectly okay to take this approach when you’re feeling down. Writing is cathartic, and it allows you to process your emotions and make sense of what’s happening or has happened. You should write whether you intend to publish or not.
However, there’s something special about sharing on Medium. When you share a personal struggle you’re going through, you tend to attract readers who are going through something similar. This allows you to connect with them and realize you’re not alone. There’s a good chance your writing will also help them realize they’re not alone.
So, what’s the verdict?
My answer is “yes.” You should continue publishing through your darkest days for two reasons:
- It keeps you consistent. Breaking your flow is risky, and it can make it difficult to get it back, which can lead to further sadness because you’re disappointed in yourself.
- It helps you connect with others facing similar adversities, so you can help each other see that you’re not the only one struggling.
However, you should take special care when editing these pieces. It’s easy to write a rant and hit publish. These are the posts that you need to set aside and edit when your mind is in a better place.
The best way to go about this is to write down your thoughts in a document (or in Medium’s pretty draft editor). It doesn’t matter. Try not to be critical of your writing during this time. Let the words flow on the page.
Then set the piece aside.
You might even feel relief from writing. I know I do. Maybe your mood will start to improve. If it does, you can revisit the piece later the same day and make edits. Or if you’re facing an illness like I am, you should wait until it subsides and you can think clearly.
You might find that you don’t want to publish what you’ve written, and that’s okay. I’ve reread many articles I’ve written and thought, “Wow, this is too personal or too negative. I don’t want anyone to see this.”
Sometimes you can revise the negativity and remove some of the personal information to turn it into something positive with a fresh perspective. I published a personal story on a private blog about my birth story around seven weeks after my son was born, which I revised late last year. The tone in the revised version is far more positive than the original’s.
I always say that the best way to get emotions on the page is to write when the feelings are raw. The best way to make these emotions readable is to edit them at a later time when the feelings aren’t as intense.
(In my case, I’m publishing this the day after I wrote it. I managed to make it across the icy roads to grab some of my favorite local coffee to cheer me up, and I’m feeling a bit better.)
Writing and time are the best healers of emotional wounds — Me
