Zora Neal Hurston, Langston Hughes, Michael Doris, Mary Karr and the average, college-level, aspiring writer all share at least one thing in common—they’ve all had pretty miserable moments in life to boast of and use those moments as the basis to spin webs of misfortune around the characters they have created in their stories. Writing is one of the best forms of therapy for the wretched individual—it allows such a person to give shape to and tame their emotions and make sense of life’s predicaments.

There is no better job for a person drowning in sorrow than that of becoming a writer. It is the only occupation I know of in which you will actually be paid for penning down your sorrow, having an excuse to submerge in your “depths of despair” full-time. It is the only career I know of in which one receives adulation for writing about extravagant grief in a way that stands out amongst the tragedies of other fellow writers.

Perhaps the main reason there is a plethora of the species of self-pronounced writers is because writing serves as a messiah to diminishing self-confidence, allowing one to take on the role of the God of the nonliving, planning and dictating every word, every action, every moment, every smile, every tear, every ounce of happiness and sadness for the characters we bring into the world of fiction. Sometimes I wonder, is it because they have such miserable lives they become writers, or are they writers because they have miserable lives? Ah, the age old question of the chicken or the egg coming first...always surprises us by manifesting itself in various forms.

Anyway, as I was browsing online and through The Writers’ Chronicle, I realized that literary works based on the theme of agony still has a high market value. I found a “Life Sucks! Show Me How” contest on AllPoetry.com. One call for literary submissions noted that “nothing pleases our stakeholders more than well-executed sadness.” With a literary environment fostering and prizing sadness, it almost tempts one to cherish the anguish that comes with life.

There has always been a demand for works of writing revolving around the theme of sadness. Just think of some of the most famous and best-selling pieces...from Antigone to Romeo & Juliet to The Scarlet Letter, there is one lesson to be learned: Sadness Sells! After all, nothing feels better than to be reminded that there are people out there more miserable than you are.

(P.S. I wrote this for a Creative Nonfiction class I took at Marymount University two years ago, and have just copy + pasted it here.)