Writing Healthy

So people talk all the time about eating healthy, i.e., carrots are a good after school snack and cookies are not; eat salads or home-cooked dinners, not McDonald's (which, by the way, I one hundred percent agree with, because I personally cannot stand McDonald's...that's just my opinion, though); so on and so forth. And then there's healthy activities. Don't spend all day playing Flash games and being on facebook (which I'm ridiculously guilty of), go outside and play. Exercise often, spend time outside, don't slouch, etc.

You can read healthy, too. For example: if you're dealing with a situation that hurt you, don't go read a book about someone else dealing with the same thing. If you're beating yourself up for your now-ex-boyfriend's suicide attempt, don't read Jennifer Brown's THE HATE LIST (which is about the same thing). If you're not comfortable with trashy language and lots and lots of teenage sex, don't read GOSSIP GIRL or the like. (Please note that I'm not dissing people who like GOSSIP GIRL; it's just really not my thing. Personally, I don't think it has any substance to it. It's just "let's get drunk and have some f-ing sex," which is not something I'm interested in reading about. At all. I like plot.)

Healthy music is more subjective; sometimes it's really really helpful to listen to angry music and sometimes that just makes it worse. Sometimes you really need "Which to Bury, Us or the Hatchet" (which, I am proud to say, HaufeCoffee shared after I recommended it to him) and sometimes you need "Hammers and Strings (A Lullaby)." Better not to listen to the wrong one at the wrong time.

But the one no one ever talks about is writing healthy. For the people who don't write much, it's not really relevant. But for people like me, who write constantly, it's really important to write healthy. Venting anger, frustration, etc. through poems is fine; rereading these poems constantly is not. If you sometimes have panic attacks because of a certain situation you went through, writing a character who has panic attacks is okay; spending a month writing a character going through the exact same situation you did and dealing with all of your issues probably isn't. Therefore, I have composed a list of the Five Rules of Writing Healthy:

1. You are not your characters. They are called characters because they are fictional. If they are similar to you, great; if they are identical to you in everything but name and appearance, this is unhealthy. STOP WRITING.

2. If something you are writing causes you to have an emotional breakdown because it reminds you too much of something that causes you to have panic attacks or similar emotional trauma, STOP WRITING.

3. All writing is first and foremost for the benefit of the author. Yes, you write to please an audience, but you do it for yourself. If something you are writing becomes a vendetta to, about, or for the benefit of an overly specific audience, STOP WRITING.
Corollary: Satire is an exception to this rule. And no, I am not saying that you should never consider your audience or even write to your audience when you write.

4. Do not try to write the final draft before the first draft. If you're losing faith in your writing while you're on the first draft of something, STOP WRITING and come back when you realize that published things go through months and months of revision before they're worth reading. First drafts are never perfect.

5. It is okay to stop writing something. If you need to take a break, do. If you need to work on something else for a while, do. If you're writing something just because you feel like you have to, STOP WRITING and come back after you've let your head clear for a bit.

Some of these may be impractical if you're a contracted novelist/screenwriter/etc., but for people like me (teens who write but aren't published [yet], or really anyone who's not published, I suppose), I think these are preeetty important. I've broken just about all of these "rules", and if I hadn't, I think I'd be happier and mentally better off for it.

That sounded so professional. I feel so important.

Catch ya later,
Bex