Terry Pratchett once told Neil Gaiman that he’s very angry, angry at the stupid things people do, at the state of the world we live in, and so on, and that to cope with his anger he writes it all out into his books, and laughs at it. That’s why he wrote so many of them, and why they’re so funny. His humor drips with satire and sarcasm and hidden fury. It was this fury that powered his writing. I’m paraphrasing this, of course. 

Read about it in more detail in this article, where Nail Gaiman talks about Terry’s death and their friendship. 

However, it’s true. 

Most of us writers are very, very angry. And somehow along the way we have decided not to destroy things out of anger but to create. We decided to write.

When you find yourself in the place of uncertainty, search for that anger. Let it power you up. 

I got reminded of my own anger today by accident. I watched the Russian movie from the 80s, “Courier,” and it pissed me off to no end. The way the women are portrayed in it, the sexism, the degradation, the objectification, the glorifying of the man’s search for the meaning in life (in the shape of a teenage boy) and the sneering at the woman’s weakness and coldness and indecision (in the shape of a a teenage girl), and the constant jokes about the women’s beauty, and women pacifying men, and women cooking for men, tucking men in bed (the mother tucked in her teenage son like he was 5, for fuck’s sake!), and all of this brainwashing I grew up with.

It made me so angry, I felt like choking. And it made me write very fast today’s chapter of T.U.B.E. I could feel my heart pounding all the way.

So search for your own anger and pour it into your writing.

Illustration by Luis Scafati