Obsession Is the Old Adderall

Be OBSESSED: a no-fail writing hack for freaks

To be obsessed is to be fixated, preoccupied, infatuated, possessed, haunted, consumed, plagued, tormented, bedeviled, eaten up, gripped/in the grip of, hung up about/on, have a thing about, have something/someone on the brain—which are all writing skills.

To write well or at all: be OBSESSED with what you write.

Recently, I gave a craft talk on stalking your obsessions, and on accident I said, “Love your work so much that you want to fuck it.”

I didn’t mean to say it, but I did mean it.

The benefits of obsession include but are not limited to:

Obsession is an impetus. Nothing has to happen to you to write about it. “A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind,” Virginia Woolf said, accurately. Ideas start in the nervous system.

Obsession is a magnet and an internal GPS telling you what to write and how to write it. Let your fixations and feelings guide you to and through your pieces.

Obsession keeps us awake and alive. Writers need obsessions when we are bored and anxious and grasping for a bliss that’s total, etc. We need to be obsessed to be.

Obsession is fuel. What’s better than Adderall? Nothing! Except obsession. You know how writing is hard? I fact-checked this, and it doesn’t have to be, not if you’re obsessed. If I have millions of thoughts/feelings/opinions on a topic, then it doesn’t hurt to write. Obsession animates and gets us to show up to write when writing is the last thing we want to do.

Obsession brings you back from the dead. Obsession reanimates. I can feel nothing and then reread an expired email to That Asshole and in seconds I’m back in unrequited love and writing 10,000 words about it.

Obsession upgrades the writing. We become so original in the grip of an obsession. I don’t have an example at this time.

Obsession reveals the writer/speaker/character. What are your obsessions, and why you and why now? What void(s) does obsession fill? How does the obsession protect you from sexually transmitted reality? Where does the obsessed mind go? Follow it to the rabbit hole’s depths. Limerence is self-realization through romantic obsession, which is an idea and sentence I’ve been trying to put somewhere.

Knowledge is made from obsession. The obsessed are forever looking for meaning—in emails, DMs, etc.—and making it up. Writers can put that searching, inventive self to actual work. Similarly, writing can rein in obsessive thinking and make it pay.

Obsession is connection. Other weirdos will be drawn to your weird shit; the weirder, the better.

Obsession is sustaining. You will get so sick of your writing, just so, so, so, sick of it—unless you’re OBSESSED in all-caps with it. You’ll revise it and rewrite it and reread it hundreds of times. You will talk and think about it even more. You will be asked about it and interviewed about it and will feel compelled to defend it. You may be done writing, but your writing will never be done with you. So, be OBSESSED so you can return and resurrect ad infinitum, which won’t feel like enough.

Obsession is sustaining, part 2. To write tragic nonfiction, you must be interested in the topic beyond having strong feelings about it enough to survive writing the piece.

Obsession gets you unstuck. When I’m a “bad” writer and my writing is “bad” and I’m stuck or blocked or frozen, what’s really going on is I don’t want to marry what I’m writing.

The obsession isn’t relevant. Don’t dismiss your obsession as “stupid” because the stupider, the funnier.

Write and pitch your obsessions, whatever they are. On accident I talked about my obsession with an Australian teen soap opera about ballet during a pitch meeting, and the editor said, “That’s an essay.” It didn’t matter that my obsession was obscure or stupid. What mattered was what I could make of my obsession.

Obsession is life. Let yourself be affected too strongly. Inhale experience; exhale social media. Don’t distract yourself or shut down. As the guy Franz Kafka said of writing, “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” Have you ever told someone that you’d be willing to die for your art? Well, be willing to live for it instead.

And whatever you write, give 15-30% more of a shit than usual.

What are you OBSESSED with? I want to know.

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Upcoming seminars and workshops to obsess over:

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LAST CALL: Funny Personal Essays: A Two-Day Intensive

In two days we’ll figure out how to turn an anecdote into an essay that’s funny and publishable.

• June 8th & 9th (Saturday & Sunday)

• 9am-12pm MDT

• Online, via Lighthouse Writers Workshop

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NEW: Writer’s Digest’s 3rd Annual Humor Writing Virtual Conference

Four one-hour Zoom seminars with four different teachers teaching all the ways to be funny. Unlimited OnDemand viewing for those who can’t make it live.

• June 15th (Sunday)

• All different times

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NEW: Traumedy (Trauma + Comedy)

Learn to make readers laugh while PUNCHING THEM IN THE HEART. Prerequisite: being in therapy.

• June 28th (Wednesday)

• 8-9:30pm ET

• Online

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ICYMI: I’m Elissa Bassist, and I teach short conceptual humor/satire writing, funny personal essays, tragicomic memoir, emotional emails, and that’s it. I edit the “Funny Women” column on The Rumpus, and I wrote the award-deserving book Hysterical.

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