something that stuck with me once, way back in middle school when i was still learning how to write - my teacher said "writing shock and tragedy is easy, it's humor that's the hardest."
i have been up and down the halls of academia. i have the fancy degree and the experience in publishing. i think i paved most of my own road with the little bricks of sorrow i had stored inside of me. i know i did it mostly with works that are blisteringly lonely. i know why we write like that. it's lifesaving.
but yeah, i mean. i also know how much people think that "sad" media is the same thing as "good" media. our human desire to connect is so hard-pressed that we immediately latch onto any broken themes. the bullied kids and the tales of inspiration. people keep saying things like "glass onion" and "everything everywhere" weren't actually good. because, you know, they're. happy. or happy-ish. happy enough. and we only value art if it's grimdark-adjacent.
do you know - people still consistently whine at me that my writing would be so good if i just capitalized things. i used to flinch. i get kind of a weird, vindictive little rush these days - i get to say thank you for the comment! i have chronic pain and this is how i conserve my hands so i can write more during the day :) grammar isn't real anyway! and now they're trapped in the room with me, you know? i get to pull out my map and show them how grammar is not the same thing as good writing.
writers have this thing. we scratch at our insides, constantly, prying our lives apart into splinters. prying the splinters apart into atoms. when we combust something into poetry, we control it. it cannot hurt us if it exists outside of us rather than burning a hole through the bottom of our lungs. it's not a wonder to me that so much of what i make comes out like a death gasp. i spent a long time at the bottom. i keep going back, too. when you're down there for so long, the only thing you can exhale is fumes.
but humor is hard. humor needs timing; which i can't promise in a paragraph. i can kind-of force it through careful spacing, but i have no idea how fast you're reading these things. humor needs a somewhat awareness of your audience, when really - anybody could be looking. humor needs us to understand what the joke is, why it's a joke, and to think - ha! that is funny. in tragedy, everyone understands the metaphor of a kicked puppy. in humor, you need to introduce them to the concept of a dog.
and forget about positivity. forget about anything not made for adults explicitly. every time i see a well-made children's media piece, i feel fucking horrible for the creators. most of the time, people see children's media as being sort of "not worth" applause, even though i'm pretty sure they have to work twice as hard. i have no idea how hard it must be to not be able to have your character just say. "well, fuck." something about a message of peace or friendship or caring - for some reason, that makes the media not for adults. like, okay. i'm pretty sure my father actually, out of all of us, could use a good book on how to control his temper and talk about his feelings.
but whatever. i write a short story about my ocd, and how it's fucking killing me. it gets an award. it gets published. i write a short story about my ocd, and how i'm overcoming it, and how my days are getting lighter and starting to flourish. i keep getting ghosted. no response. it just is lacking... something.
is this it, forever? you can be an artist, okay. but the trade off is that the things you make - if they're happy? if they're joyful? people will say it's stupid and pandering. you bite your nails off. you file your teeth. you hear something inside of you breaking.
the other day in a writing group, someone i'd thought of as a friend said: "you write so much better these days! i love what you make when you'd rather be dead."
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