Writing Under Emotion

I’m a mess of contradictions.  I can be coldly logical, but there is a side of me that can be emotional too.  It’s like the yin and yang of my personality, and while yin may usually hold sway, yang may rear its ugly head from time to time.

The reason I bring this up is that although emotion is a good tool to use from time to time to spur writing, I’ve also learned that if it is unfocused, it can be destructive for my writing.  Too much amped up emotion, what I call “getting my blood up,” rarely produces anything of value.

Anything I write while my blood is up is laced with impatience and biting invective.  The snap-reaction side of my characters comes out, and while that may work for characters that are known for snap judgments and not thinking things through, most of my characters are a bit deeper than that.

So what do I do when my blood is up?  I don’t write.  I find a way to cool off.  I try to stay away from social media(posts written in emotion rarely win friends).  If I do write something, I make sure to come back and correct it later(and yes, it inevitably needs correction).

Don’t think me an angry person.  I do this when I’m emotional over any issue.  If I’m sad, that comes out in what I write(the characters are too morose).  If I’m overly happy, then my characters are naïve and far too optimistic about life.  I need to be balanced to create depth, for too much of any one emotion will create one-dimensional characters that lean too heavily on the emotion I felt while writing them.

How does emotion affect your writing?  Does it affect your writing?