My New Year's resolution is to start writing more. When my dad got sick, I vowed to start writing lighter stuff, but I just couldn't do it and eventually I stopped writing altogether. I am not capable of writing something nice or life-affirming. I have to go where my mind takes me and that's undoubtedly into darker/disturbing stuff.

I understand the desire to censor or direct yourself-- I tend to shrug off "easy" writing projects in favor of ones that make me sweat a little. They don't always go the way I intend, but the process can be rewarding and it feels more like growth to push at the edges of your comfort zone.

"Life-affirming" takes many shapes. What does it even mean to be alive, anyway? It depends on the writer and reader what message they take from the work. I find lots of dark or dreary fiction to be life-affirming, at least in terms of craft.

There's nothing wrong with genre fiction in itself, but it's rare that someone writing to genre specifications manages to also stick out from the pack. There are sci-fi and fantasy novels which have proven to tick the boxes of genre as well as being great literature, but they're memorable precisely because there's relatively few of them.