How Depression Affects My Writing

I mentioned in a previous post that I'm dealing with a depressive phase of my bipolar disorder. This affects my writing to some extent. Even with these posts and recreating this Blogger account, I'm having to fight through feelings that my writing isn't any good and that the blog is pointless. This is even more pronounced with my fiction writing. I haven't touched DH01 in days, and in fact, I haven't touched it since the 7th of this month.

Depression doesn't so much block me as make it harder to connect to the ideas I have for my writing. This is true whether I'm pantsing the WIP or have an outline for it. It's frustrating to be able to see the ideas, but have an inability to "grasp" them well enough to write them out. Back in the past when I got like this, I'd try to force the words out, following advice that it's best to write every day regardless of mood, and that didn't end well for me. Sure, the words were as good as they would have been if my mood wasn't down, but I hated what I wrote and ended up abandoning the project for a few months. Not days or weeks. Months. So now I don't try to force the words out when I'm depressed. I go with the flow instead. 

At the same time, I also have a very poor opinion of my writing. I know I write well, and that I can create engaging characters and entertaining stories. Consciously. Logically. But the depression tells me all my writing, especially the fiction, is crap. This is part of the reason why I don't touch projects I force depression-phase words onto after forcing those words. 

If I'm lucky, I can look at my stuff to edit it. This time, I'm not lucky. I've been using this down period where I'm not writing to get to know ProWritingAid software again, using their web editor one paragraph at a time. It has few complaints for the most part; I've spent long enough writing to eradicate most of the issues it highlights. The "Repeats" checker section, though, always "confirms" the depression's opinion of my writing, so I don't end up doing any editing. I'm trying to figure out how to get ProWritingAid to work best for me, and this is not helping. At this point, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. 

The worst thing about pronounced depressions like this is that I don't know how long I'll be in it. It makes me not care about my writing, and if I had a deadline, that would only exacerbate the disinterest. Even if I were inclined to pursue traditional publishing, I wouldn't be able to because of these depressive phases so it's good I've latched onto the independent/self publishing track like I have. This depressive phase may last another day, a week, a month—or longer. I don't know. All I can really say is that I'm glad I don't have these phases more often. I'd never get anything done.