by Sherry Ning How to Write - by Sherry Ning - Pluripotent (substack.com)
Most writing comes from sadness. Rarely does writing come from happiness. Not because we don’t like happiness, but precisely because we all know what it is. This is Tolstoy’s “happy families are all alike and every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” — only in sadness is there variety, color, depth, and things worth talking about. After all, no one visits a therapist or introspect when they’re happy.
The word “passion” comes from the Latin, patior, which means “to suffer or endure.”
Even the word “excruciating” means “pain that comes from the cross” or “as painful as a crucifixion” (Latin, excruciare). In other words, without passion — suffering and enduring — there would be no stories. There would be no journey and no hero to be created.
Write to your own idiosyncratic interests:
“Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.
Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying patient that would not enrage by its triviality?” “Write as if you were dying.” Read Annie Dillard’s greatest writing advice. ‹ Literary Hub