Am I only a good writer when I’m sad?

I want to tell you something. Let me whisper a secret in your ear.

“Sad” is such a simple word in this case. I write about ache, melancholy, depression, suicidal ideation, the existential dread that is inherent in living, but in the end, does it all boil down to this?: She was sad.

To be honest, I’m not sad right now. I’m a-okay. Maybe the new dosage of meds is working or maybe, since I’m on the final days of my period, my mood has leveled to less of an extreme. I’m not happy. I’m not sad.

I am, I am, I am, I am.

Last week, I took on a new ghostwriting project. They expect me to write 15,000 words per week, and they pay me $.02 per word. Highway robbery, tbh, but if you want to ghostwrite fiction (and in my case, contemporary romance), you either get robbed or you don’t get the job.

Not to be a bitch towards romance writing (and romance readers), but the work is simple. I don’t have to think too hard about word choice or if I’m using “to be” verbs too frequently. The writing isn’t what matters, which is why, partially, romance novels can be cranked out so quickly. I’ll finish this book in a little under two months and then immediately start another, and maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll write something of my own as well.

Ghostwriting is perfect for when I am. My fingers get to move a bit, and every few pages, I can add in a few beautiful sentences, something that may ultimately get deleted but which brings me the smallest amount of joy. Look! She can still do it! She can still breathe poetry, she can still make a fictional world three dimensional.

Again, not to be a pretentious fuck, but that’s not what gets the reviews going. Behold, actual reviews from a novel I ghostwrote:

Ungh, the spice. 🥵

LOTS of spice 🌶🌶🌶

most beautiful slow burn I've ever read. And also the dirtiest. 😉🤣 IYKYK

That’s okay. It’s okay. I’m not mad. Not mad. Fuck, I’m not mad.

My spice of choice. Photo by Mae Mu from Unsplash.

I want to tell you something. Let me whisper a secret in your ear.

I have been in love for as long as I can remember. From the age of five onward, every emotion of mine sprang from love, from desire, from yearning. The neighbor boy(s), the bad boy in middle school who paid attention to me even though I was a sweaty nerd, the one girl in high school (very confusing for me), my college boyfriend who said he would marry me and whose heart I broke, the boy from New Zealand who said he’d move here for me and then ghosted me, the man I married, whose simple act of existing makes my body float into the heavens, whose smile sends me careening into a vast space that is somehow outside of space.

Books.

Music.

Poetry.

Love.

This is more than being.

Where does this love go, this yearning, this desire, this ache (an excruciating term for its multiplicity), when I just am? Let’s philosophize for a moment. I’m not a scientific person by nature, perhaps because I lack logic, tend to spiral, and am prone to bouts of melancholy. But if there is one thing I remember, it’s that matter cannot be created or destroyed.

Stupid. Silly. I’m a stupid, silly girl. My emotions are too large. They expand in my body like soaked cotton and then flake into particles, gone. Where do they go? How can they disappear like that, how can the intensity fade with such ease? They are still there, of course. It’s impossible for them to be gone.

This can expand into the question of a soul or consciousness—is this a kind of matter? Where do we go when we’re gone? Are we already gone?

Ugh. Stupid, silly girl.

This is a reminder that I don’t write my substack to come to a conclusion. I write to dissect, which is an ironically clinical word. But here I am, laid out on a table, unstitched, an autopsy, a grave.

My great aunt Bessie donated her body to science when she died. I always thought that was a beautiful way to go.