Craft of Writing: Using heated emotions to make a cool piece of work.

 Dear Reader,

We all have emotions. Some of them can get pretty intense. Instead of bottling those feelings up, grab a pen and a scrap of paper. Write down what comes to mind until you feel calm. By the end you might have a really gripping scene for a story, a powerful poem, or a pile or word vomit that you can just burn and feel better about. In any case, it's nifty to do this with these feelings because you're engaged in transmuting something that is purely in your head/heart into something physical.

You don't have to limit yourself to words. There are countless ways to express intense feelings through art. Some of my most active and intense paintings have come out of my trying to create my way out of a depressive funk and process psychological trauma. If your medium is clay, you can make some awesome sculptures. Heck, you could create a sculpture that represents the cause of your vexation and then destroy it. It's really cathartic to be honest.

The best thing about taking your emotions and creating things out of them is the fact that it's a safe way to express some things that society in general are squicked by. Intense anger is probably the biggest squick factor for a lot of people. Making art out of your feelings is cathartic and you end up with something pretty cool that you get to choose what happens with it. People can look at what you've made and have no idea what inspired it. They can debate until the cows come home just what your painting means, when all you were doing was throwing paint on the canvas until the urge to throw something finally went away. You don't have to tell them that was what was going on. You can just smile and keep it as your little secret.