This topic came up the other day in a conversation with SJSU's visiting writer. He made a good comment about not allowing yourself to use your moods as excuses to avoid writing. His point was that, in reality, making yourself work during times of crisis, depression, moodiness, any kind of emotion, is a good thing. Because you will write things in ways you wouldn't otherwise write them. And, as he pointed out, something that might seem a labor in the present ends up changing the outcome of an entire body of work in a surprising way. And that's not a bad thing.

Writing isn't a discipline. It's a practice. And it's easy to call in sick when we are feeling less than creative. Don't allow yourself to do it. Get in there and write that scene you've been avoiding writing for the character with a dark side. Journal something. Write a snarky ad campaign for a company you hate. Dip your poison pen into an ink well and write that person who jilted you back in high school. Write a letter to god. Write a poem you are certain no one else will ever see. Go back and revise something you've already written.

The key here is just to make yourself do it. In some way. In some form. Writing is writing, even if you think, in the moment, it is terrible and uninspired. You have enough work sitting there in front of you that wants and needs attention. Do a shot of whiskey and get pissed off at it. Or get yourself worked up into a good cry and write your way through it.

Make.
Yourself.
Write.

Have you read "Darkness Visible" by the late William Styron?