Mental Health Tips for Writers
and Other Creatives
Creative pursuits can provide a kind of balm to a person’s mental health. A quick web-search will uncover dozen of scholarly articles on the uses of creative writing therapy, art therapy, and the like. But even less formal approaches can aid in managing depression, anxiety, and other common forms of mental and behavioral health issues.
But often creative types face their own mental health challenges in pursuit of their creations. I am going to stick mainly to writing because that’s my wheelhouse, but understand that what I offer here is just as applicable to a variety of other artistic pursuits.
First the Benefits
Release
Writing can be like performing an exorcism. There’s something inside and needs to get out. Whether you’re journaling or blogging about your demons or harnessing their restlessness and channeling it into a work of fiction, getting words on the page can provide relief. Get it out of you and onto the page! It doesn’t have to be the desire to write that causes you to feel bottled up and ready to burst. Writing can be the holy water that casts them out.
A word of caution: if you’re writing to cast out those demons, don’t go back and revise and edit just yet. You don’t want to argue with them. You just want to get them out of your head. In fact, I’m from the school of “never go back to re-read what you just wrote.” Give it room to breathe. Get a little distance. Unless you’re writing something short and on a looming deadline, it can wait. And if you took to the page because you were feeling low, anxious, lost, or hopeless, do you really want to read the words you just produced before you’ve gotten in the clear?
Clarity
If journaling is your expression, the benefits may be more obvious. You’re working through something on the page. Raw thoughts and feelings in black and white. Journaling requires honesty, and having to be honest with ourselves and the page can bring a level of objectivity-clarity even-to the issues laid out on the page. But I wouldn’t try to solve the issues — at least not to force a solution. Journalling is for putting on paper the things that are effecting your mental health and overall well-being.
Accomplishement
Then there’s the sense of accomplishment. You wrote something. You made words that weren’t there before. Full stop. Don’t look too hard at how many words, their quality, or what stage of a project you’re in. You wrote something. And if you were feeling down, unproductive, useless, etc, look at you! You wrote something! Maybe you didn’t meet a goal, but if you were previously nested on the couch watching Netflix shows you don’t really care about, battling a dose of depression or anxiety, this is an improvement.
Escape
And then there’s escapism. What better way to leave your problems behind than to disappear into a fictional world of your own design? Travel unknown realms, distant worlds, or worlds very much like our own, but where you make the rules and people behave in ways you direct them? And again, if we’re talking about writing for mental health, we aren’t concerned about quality. We’re concerned with the act of getting those keys clacking or that pen scratching. Take off into somewhere else!
The Problems
Perfectionism
It should be clear if you’ve gotten this far that perfectionism is one of the greatest problems writers face. And there is little more destructive to a person’s mental health than demanding absolute perfection. Strive for continual improvement. Identify weak spots in your craft and structure, but don’t shoot for infallibility. You’re only human. Cut yourself a little slack. Perfectionism is admirable when the pursuit of it leads to a better final product, but when it leads to disillusionment in your own work, it’s time to give yourself a break.
Therefore, I never recommend going back and rereading every sentence the moment you write it. Don’t get hung up on every noun and verb or punish yourself if you’ve added too many adverbs as you’re pounding out that draft. There’s a time for that. Even when editing, if you’re stuck on a section, mark it and go back. Don’t dig yourself an anxiety or depression hole by trying to make every line a work of art before moving to the next one.
Impostor Syndrome
Impostor syndrome is a term I came across only in the last few years. And when I discovered it, I realized I could be the poster-person for it. Imposter syndrome is the idea that you aren’t good enough, that you’re fooling yourself and everyone else into thinking you’re something you’re not. It’s questioning the validity and purpose of your pursuits. You wrote a book. So what? You’re just a hack. You shouldn’t really be trying to pull this off. You can’t call yourself a writer. You’ve only finished one book.
Impostor syndrome has kept me from engaging in writers’ communities. It’s kept me from marketing myself. More damagingly to my career as a writer and my own mental health is that it’s kept me from taking myself seriously enough to continue to the work. If you don’t believe you can, if you don’t believe you’re good enough, you won’t. There’s no better way to stop yourself from even trying to reach those goals and take the chances if you feel you’re a fraud or that you don’t know what you’re doing.
You’re a writer, and you wrote.
Writer’s block
You want that sense of accomplishment. You want the release. And you’ve gotten past enough impostor syndrome that you’ve opened up your notebook or device and committed to writing something. Enter the dreaded writer’s block. There’s a wall in front of you, or a monster blocking your path. I once had a picture of the rancor from Return of the Jedi on my bulletin board to have a visual of my writer’s block. But it’s very real.
And there are a lot of ways around it. Stuck on a project? Start something completely new. Maybe don’t commit to an entire novel just yet, but write a character or scenario sketch. Describe an interesting setting. No need for it to fit anywhere. You’re getting the juices flowing-priming the pump.
Or write something stupid. Yep. I said that. Write something ridiculous, off the wall, out of character for you. Write something that won’t appear in any final product you produce. Or take the characters in the project you’re working on (for fiction writers, of course) and do something absurd with-or to-them. If you make yourself laugh, you’re releasing serotonin. If you make yourself cringe, maybe you had some anger to work out. You might even get an idea out of the exercise. The point is, it’s exercise. You escaped, accomplished something, moved past a rut. You did something for your mental health.
A Word on Habits
I’ve long known-but only recently embraced-and practiced the idea of creating habits. Writing every day is crucial. Even when you don’t feel like it at all and don’t think you have anything to say-even when there’s not an idea in your overtaxed head-write. Spend 10 minutes. Blocked? Try one of the tips above. Just write something. Not only will it build your skills as a writer through practice, the brain seems to enjoy sticking to a habit. It says, “look there! You did it even when you didn’t feel like it,” and it gives you gifts of happy little neurochemicals.
But, if the very idea of writing makes you feel worse, listen to yourself. I know that may seem contradictory, but I understand that sometimes you can’t force yourself to get up and do anything. I’ve been there many times. Forgive yourself for the day, but commit to it tomorrow.
What do you do for your mental health? Are there mental health challenges I missed which creatives experience? Leave a comment. Thanks.
Phillip Davis is the author of Peppermint Lightning, Jack-o-’Lightning, and Justice for the Missing. (Sequel coming in 2023!) He is an elementary school teacher, mental-health advocate, long time NaNoWriMo participant, and member of the Ninja Writer’s community. He writes on the topics of writing, building an author platform, mental health, and self improvement.
