Ask the Author: Hari Ziyad
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Hari Ziyad
My anxiety, while terribly inconvenient in many other respects, has been a critical inspiration for my writing recently. When my mind keeps returning to a thing, when it won't let that thing go, I try to interpret it as an alert from my body that this is something that needs writing about, even if I will only write about it indirectly. I could be working on a fiction story about aliens, and if I've been ruminating on my relationship with my mother all week, I can work that out on the page by exploring tensions in a Martian family. If I'm writing an essay about a pop culture event, I can position whatever happened to Megan Thee Stallion through the lens of some related experience with my mother that I'm struggling with understanding.
I spent a lot of my youth running from the uncomfortable thoughts anxiety brings up, but incorporating them into my writing instead has not only offered a massive source of content (because I have a massive amount of things about which I am anxious, lol), it has also been profoundly therapeutic. I don't have to spend my life running away from difficult things or trying to wish them away. I can conjure stories from them. They are an ingredient of magic.
Of course, I often need some other sort of motivation to push through the initial discomfort, and that is assisted by routine. I try to maintain a regular schedule and a regular space for writing, and even if nothing comes up I can use that time to meditate and sit with thoughts I may have otherwise pushed away, which makes writing about them later easier. Most importantly, I don't pressure myself with figuring everything out in any one session. In fact, it helps to pick up writing next time if I end the session with more questions to try and answer later!
I spent a lot of my youth running from the uncomfortable thoughts anxiety brings up, but incorporating them into my writing instead has not only offered a massive source of content (because I have a massive amount of things about which I am anxious, lol), it has also been profoundly therapeutic. I don't have to spend my life running away from difficult things or trying to wish them away. I can conjure stories from them. They are an ingredient of magic.
Of course, I often need some other sort of motivation to push through the initial discomfort, and that is assisted by routine. I try to maintain a regular schedule and a regular space for writing, and even if nothing comes up I can use that time to meditate and sit with thoughts I may have otherwise pushed away, which makes writing about them later easier. Most importantly, I don't pressure myself with figuring everything out in any one session. In fact, it helps to pick up writing next time if I end the session with more questions to try and answer later!
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