In a post on Writer Unboxed, Jim Dempsey says that strong emotions create strong art. “We need to accept our sadness and anger and other strong emotions, and maybe even learn to enjoy some of the things they bring us as individuals, like the idea for a new novel or the inspiration for a love song,” Dempsey writes.
Love and heartbreak are notable contributors to the arts, from love songs to poems to novels and film. Anger drives art, including stand-up comedy from the likes of Bill Hicks, Lewis Black, and Larry David. Regardless of the emotion, intensity is key.
“A group of psychologists in the Netherlands showed that people experiencing anger brainstormed ideas in a more unstructured way than those who were not angry, and that this type of flexible thinking produced more creative results,” Dempsey says, citing protest songs as a major example.” And other research from the department of psychology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania reported that people who experienced intense emotions performed better in creative tests than those who experienced their emotions as either negative or positive.”
Stream of consciousness writing is a great way to get strong emotions onto the page. “Just get it all out there in one rapid burst,” Dempsey says. “Experiencing the high and lows of life, the whole range of the human experience, can lead to the intrinsic motivation we need to be creative.”
