Despair and Writing

I write best when I am despairing.

I wish I understood this combination.  I would like to write best when I am happy or bored or something else which is more ordinary and less painful.  But it apparently does not work that way, at least for me.

In despair perhaps there is pain - and the only way that I can relieve that pain is to write.  It is not that I write specifically of despair; indeed, the writings under this influence range from happy to sad to downright profound (to the point that I can hardly recognize that the words came from me).  But despair is the trigger; without despair, I am merely plodding through, trying to chase a Muse that simply will not be caught.

Can I force myself to despair more?  Seems a bit counterintuitive, does it not?  Yet that is the very thing that makes me write more prolifically and more skillfully than ever.  So it is almost a challenge to my sense of well being:  Want to write?  Despair more.  Put yourself in emotionally challenging and painful situations.  Make your heart bleed and your soul cry for that which it can never have and then which has passed beyond and all that is beyond the reach of repairing.

Suffer.  Cry.  And find that your Muse offers the the comfort not of a hug or kiss, but simply words.  Words from the heart and soul, words that seek to move the pain out of the secret places of myself and onto the page.