Writing Angry Doesn’t Actually Work For Me Anymore
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Truth Be Told Writing Angry Never Really Worked For Me
At sixty-seven years of age, I most certainly can vouch for the saying, “You’re never too old to learn.”
At this point who said it first and when they said it is immaterial. The point is, what I just learned about myself and how I learned it.
It’s a good thing my stories don’t come with webcam enabled as I write because all my writing brothers and sisters and my readers would see me with globs of gooey egg on my face.
Recently (yesterday), I wrote a piece that came off not only tinged with biting sarcasm but as a stream of anger brewing just beneath the surface. A lot of what my writing friends picked up on it.
Truth be told, I wasn’t quite expecting the response I got.
But then, I never do.
That’s because, typically, when I write with righteous indignation and spew fire, I’m thinking in the back of my mind I’m doing it for a noble cause. Somehow, I convince myself I am passionately stirring the cauldron of injustice, doing my part to right wrongs, and prove the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.
What could be more noble and lofty than being a freedom fighter with words?
And then a conversation with my darling wife and feedback from you writing friends of mine managed to hold a mirror up and force me to take a hard look at myself.
What I saw was, in most cases, my rants (according to my honey, there have been a ton of them) weren’t done to expose the longtime suffering of the downtrodden and the innocent. Not even close. My rants were all about me and how angry I was about things happening to me.
Most of them were all about me.
D*mn. They didn’t even come close to being righteous.
Even some of my stories I didn’t think were angry displayed an undertow of frustration surging between the lines. Stories I thought were nothing more than cute little tongue-in-cheek satirical slams…
