Neil Serven

I’ve been out of work for over a month now, and while I feel antsy, it’s taken a while to permit myself to use the time to write. When a writer is employed with a day job, they invariably envision how much writing they could get done if they weren’t working. Part of the reason I haven’t been writing, I think, is a sense of guilt that I should be doing other things pertaining to the job search.

One of the things that motivates me to write is a sense of revenge. Having been laid off, it might not surprise anyone that I am harboring a sense of bitterness. It occurs to me that this is a time when that motivator should be looming large, and I should use this time to find my words.

I have always appreciated this video about failure and revenge from the writer Elizabeth McCracken (“A Long Game”), whom I have had the privilege to interview in the past. “A well-nourished, very private sense of revenge has enough heat and light to power a city, never mind a novel,” she says.

McCracken speaks about revenge as a motivator as a response to failure, but I am drawn to the idea of writing as an act of revenge itself. You can base characters loosely on people who have affronted you and give them their due. You can use that zingy comeback—the esprit d’escalier—that didn’t come to you on the spot. You can play out scenarios that in real life got cut short, or follow decisions that never got made. Broadly, writing offers the chance to confront the bizarre and reconcile the unexpected with patience and wisdom.

And naturally, I have a lot of things to say in response to a scenario that got cut short. Writing, among other things, can blaze a path that will bring you to that sense of closure.

Tagged: authors, creative-writing, writing