Writing your way out of a black hole

A few months ago, I launched a new website for my business: www.thisistheday.com.au. 

Lots of very nice people said very nice things, and to date it’s proven relatively useful when touting my wares.

Write Or Not To Write?

During the making of, I ummed and ahhed about having a blog attached to the site. A good way to opine and share perspective 20+ years ago, but in our fragmented, polarised world of 2025, is there any point?

I’ve been seriously overthinking the whole thing for a few months.

I overthought and worried what friends would think, what family would think; even worse, what strangers would think.  It’s taken the last while to realise no one will especially care. Indeed, why would they? Last look at the news headlines made me shiver.  The world is not a happy place. Social cohesion is at its lowest ebb. The US continues to skip merrily towards its own meltdown. The notion of a united democracy, a terrible irony.

This said, there is much to be said about the therapeutic effect of writing - its impact on the writer, sod the reader for a second.

In my other world, I’m writing a book, a novel.  It’s hard work.  Perhaps the hardest thing I’ve ever set to do. I’ve been attacking it for the last few years, a legacy of Covid.  Now, I’m on a third manuscript, just, still a billion miles from completion, or sharing outside a select few, let alone publishing. 

For me, publishing is not the core aim of writing a book. It’s the action of writing, its process, that motivates. Writing, doing the thing regularly, is a healthy habit to build a habit for good. It improves confidence in my output as well as confidence in the writing of that output, if that makes sense. And, as a task, soothes the brain and quietens my fight or flight response to the world’s ongoing dread. Instead, after writing, I feel better, hopeful even, or at very least, distracted from the dread.

(Whether the writing is any good is another matter entirely. That quest for quality, the perennial scrap with one’s sense of imposter is another tack to air for a different post.)

Firming the link between imagination and blank page, embracing an iterative state, builds creative muscle.  Muscle to express the richness of your imagination. To be pretentious and steal someone else’s thought, which I guess is in keeping with publishing a blog, the process of writing saves me from the poverty of my intentions. As we all know the path to hell is littered with good intentions.

This is why the act of doing – from cooking to gardening to walking and running - are actively encouraged for those with acute depression and/ or anxiety. Action short circuits ennui, getting you out of the black hole you’ve fallen into.

And it’s the action of writing that makes for a sharper communicator - essential for novel writing AND in my professional life too, as a brand strategist or consultant (a word I still have a problem with) for hire.

It was Ray Bradbury who said, ‘You only fail if you stop writing.’

Never stop.

Both a brilliant song - Good God, you said / Is that the only thing you care about - and best advice for any of us who write for the sake of writing. By never stopping, maybe, just maybe, we’ll arrive in many years to come, with a so called ‘final’ manuscript. And maybe, just maybe, others will read merit in it. 

Best,

Carl