On Tragedies and Writing

I used to have this habit of turning to writing during times of tragedy and loss. I took to heart the idea that pain is the perfect catalyst for an inspired essay, poem or story. But more than a year of doing this and I have yet to come up with something more substantial than the pseudo-journals I’ve made. It made me realize how even though writing your thoughts immediately after a personal catastrophe is therapeutic and feels so much like a release, in my experience at least, the things ( poems, essays, stories) you’ll come up with if you force it, using your emotions as your fuel, are pretty much trashy and pathetic . Of course, I am not a good writer to begin with harhar but I found myself nodding and agreeing with this entry from NG’s blog:

Neil Gaiman:
I don’t think immediate tragedy is a very good source of art. It can be, but too often it’s raw and painful and un-dealt with. Sometimes art can be a really good escape from the intolerable, and a good place to go when things are bad, but that doesn’t mean you have to write directly about the bad things; sometimes you need to let time pass, and allow the thing that hurts the most to get covered with layers, and then you take it out, like a pearl, and you make art out of it.