Every story I have ever written takes me on a journey of sweet agony from dark to light. The creative process involves a plunge into one’s depths and the wrenching search for just the right word, just the right sentence, just the right characterization, just the right plot turns, just the right meaning, just the right expression of the artist’s truth that every chosen word contributes to. In this cauldron, art is made. It is a place of strong emotions and hard mental work. But how else can it be my art? What do you think? Must a writer suffer for their art?
Years ago, I wrote a novel. (Don’t ask to see it, no-one will ever see it.). Well I remember the excruciating experience. The constant focus on “what does this mean” is mentally exhausting!! “Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I’m always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.” - Flannery O’Connor
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
I've suffered a lot to bring some of my stories to life. Sometimes I'll just stare at my screen for hours getting nothing done because what I have in mind doesn't feel right, and I therefore can't write it. Then it'll bother me for the rest of the day, and the next day, and the next day... until I get that one idea which changes everything. Then there are those stories that I know right away. A story I wrote, "My Oddly Big Sister", was written in a matter of hours, and there was minimal trouble. I knew this story from heart even though it's fictional. We borrow elements from our lives, and those can really guide us in crafting a story. When we can't do that, lots of questions we must figure out arise. But those questions relate to the creative process. The creative process can be made easier by various techniques that all basically guide you into answering the right questions by using some kind of framework. The Snowflake method is one big framework of questions. I once watched a screenwriter explain that if you don't enjoy writing, something's wrong with your writing process. You haven't tuned it enough to your liking, and this is what I've been thinking about. How can I make my writing process smarter and more efficient? How can I reduce those 'empty hours'? There are also other times when I think that if I'm having such a hard time with a story, maybe it shouldn't be written at all. There are other stories that give me much less pain.
That's a really insightful point, but I have to say I do enjoy writing. I love writing! Suffering and all.
I've written a few pieces that were very fun to write, and I generally feel good about myself after a productive session, but the struggle is real! I sometimes agonize over passages or entire chapters, and some days I can barely get words on the page, if any. That's always discouraging. The only time I've ever "bled on the page," was in my second book that I set aside a while back (maybe permanently) after 80K. The first 35K of that book closely paralleled a two-year relationship I had years ago that ended very badly and absolutely destroyed me. I didn't write it for healing purposes. I wrote it to be a good story, but I thought there would be some kind of release or catharsis afterward. I was so wrong. The rough patches and the cheating and, of course, the breakup were all excruciating to write, and it made me angry and depressed all over again. I was pretty down for the next couple of weeks. After several editing passes, I can now read it without getting too upset. It was all worth it, though. It might not be the best thing I've ever written, but it's up there. I should try to finish that book, so it doesn't go to waste.
You raise an important point - that different topics affect us in different ways. A heavy topic will wrench us more than a lightweight piece. Especially if we are reliving a troubling period in our lives. I hope you do. During a dark period in my life, I kept a journal, and it's some of the best writing I ever did.
I think the idea of suffering for your rat* has several levels of meaning to it. For one I think it means you need to have lived a life with some suffering in it in order to be able to capture anything deep or meaningful about life. A person who's lived a sterile easy life won't have much to say that isn't shallow. Becoming mature only happens through suffering. It's those times when we butt heads up against reality or need to learn important life lessons the hard way that really force us to grow up. Then of course there's that terrible stereotype of the suffering/starving artist, living practically homeless and going through hell so they have enough meaningful life experience to make great art. Too many people have deliberately put themselves in bad situations because they interpreted it that way. They might read something really inspiring by someone like Hunter S Thompson, and think "Wow, that's profound, and so cool! I need to become a drug addict so I can write like that!" It's sort of the old story of looking for an easy way to the top. Not that suffering is easy, but some people seem to believe the suffering or drugs are all that matters, and that they don't need to develop skills or get in loads of practice. This idea inspired a lot of people in the wake of Baudelaire and Rimbaud (who were highly influential on Jim Morrisson). But there's no way suffering or drugs can take the place of talent or skills. * It's too cool of a typo, I'm leaving it.
The idea of suffering for you art applies to all artforms of course. There's a story about the group of magazine illustrators who were trained by Howard Pyle, that included N C Wyeth. He was told by Pyle that he needed to go out and get some life experience in order to bring his art up to par, and I think in the southwest in particular because he wanted to do cowboy art. So he took on a job at a ranch and later visited a couple other ranches, and for a time illustrated mainly westerns. The idea is that his work took on more depth and gritty realism once he was living in such a tough place where you have to work hard with your hands everyday and you're surrounded by these tough cowboys and characters, and of course also that it made him much better suited to illustrate Westen stories because he had firsthand knowledge of all the gear and horses and real cowboys, and lived in those landscapes. Article Also, it was only after he served some time on a whaling ship that Melville wrote Moby Dick. Mere research wouldn't have been nearly as good.
So true. The greatest lessons I learned in life, the deepest emotions I ever felt, came out of suffering. And a lot of positive came out of it too - like the deep and meaningful bond between me and my gravely ill husband.
You might not have had enough distance from it yet. Highly emotional things can take a decade or more sometimes before you're ready to process them and heal or move on.
Yeah, there were probably some residual feelings there. It had actually been a little over a decade. I think part of the problem, if you'd call it that, is that I become very involved with my characters. I feel a lot of what they're feeling, and my MC was put through the ringer in ways I could still remember and identify with. Like I said, though, it was worth it in the end. I came out of it with a decent story.
Why must a writer only suffer? Emotions like people are an ever-changing spectrum. Where is it laid in stone that anger is more powerful than joy? Prolonged melancholy and the plight of Job more robust than the simple pleasure of sitting on a sunwarmed step at twilight. The power of emotion rests in how one identifies and focuses the aforementioned feelings. There is an odd type of clarity in an endorphin high attained when one has completed a seemingly impossible piece. Consider things written in the first red haze of rage? Is it coherent, cruel? Look at righteous fury, when one has turned over the pieces and examined them, allowed the first flood of wrath to dispel. Clarity and a unique idea unleashed. Abstract to the triggering event, concrete in execution and voice. Or that great gapping maw left when it is time to do what is right rather than easy...(that decision, while it was the right one, still hurts). There is a strong correlation between creativity, neurodivergence, and mental health. Those with highly creative and/or intelligent natures and biological imbalances in the brain. It is often the cost of the creative process.
It's not more suffering than any other worthy pursuit. I mean, I'd take writing a novel over going through medical school any day. The latter is clearly less pleasant. Hell I think it's easier to write a novel than be an Uber or Taxi driver, or someone who has to risk her life/limb drilling for crude oil. Sure, certain kinds of introspection or the trials of perfectionism can be equated with suffering, but I'm just not sold on it being particularly significant in the grand scheme.
Thank you for your eloquence. It is rather inspiring. Yes. As a group, I think writers are rather serious. Serious about life, serious about their art, serious about finding meaning in what they do. The sensitive and the creative tend to hurt.
Well when you put it that way ... I was thinking of a different comparison. Actually, what inspired me to the thoughts expressed in the OP is the advent of generative-AI assisted "writing" - and how in its application it circumvents the creative process of making art.
It isn't mere negative emotion that causes growth or maturity, it's the learning that sometimes comes with it. You can suffer all the negative emotions you want without growing a bit if you just let them wash over you. And the reason they say it's the negative experiences is because those are the ones that get you past the sticking points. If you never went through anything that really made you dig down deep and try harder than you ever had before, or changed you as a person for the better, you'd just remain as you were before. Once you get beyond about your early 20's it requires some painful growth (hence the term growth pains) to get any farther in maturity. Think about it, how do we grow more mature even as children? Often it requires some punishment after we've done something selfish and wrong. Without the negative reinforcement we'd remain children all our lives (emotionally). But I think the saying comes from the wisdom that recognizes it's often the painful experiences that bring growth. I don't think it's the only way we grow, but I do think at times it's necessary. It's a well-known psychological fact that most people, if allowed to, would remain as childish as possible for as long as possible. In fact much of psychological development comes only when we go through those harrowing experiences that cause us to shed our more infantile ways.
A few articles: 9 Ways Suffering Can Lead To Inner Growth And Happiness Can Suffering Make Us Stronger? How Adversity Makes You Stronger Adversity is a good word, and helps to understand this better. If you face adversity you come out stronger than you were. Even if you don't win the race or whatever, just trying your best and pushing yourself harder makes a huge difference. People who never push themselves or reach down deep don't get these benefits. Having everything handed to you on a silver platter doesn't help you grow, it prevents it and generally makes people resentful and surly (it's sometimes called affluenza). You have to test yourself and push against boundaries to improve. In fact what makes us feel good about our lives is really making progress toward a goal. And the bigger the goal the better. That requires discipline and work. I know when I spend a period of my life being lazy and not trying to work toward something I start to feel pretty crappy. But progress made toward becoming a writer makes me feel excellent. Want to get better as a writer? You don't get there by just thinking happy thoughts, you need to push yourself to study, practice, go through those critiques and rejections that will hurt for a while, but it all makes you stronger. From the 1st article: "However, in recent years, psychologists have become aware of phenomenon known as 'post-traumatic growth.' " Once again, science beginning to discover what religions knew long ago
Another aspect of it— People suffering from some kind of phobia or strong fear do far better when they undergo what's known as exposure therapy, meaning they get exposed to the thing that frightens them—at first in very small controlled doses and gradually in larger ones, and they usually get significantly better, more able to withstand the fear and function despite it, or even totally overcome it. So what leads to improvement isn't hiding from the things that frighten you, but just the opposite. We shouldn't be purposely avoiding things that scare us, but deliberately facing our fears.
That makes more sense. The OP harkened Writer, you know, a little pomp (which is fine). Spoiler: Capital 'W', portrait of Not the Territory circa five minutes ago Anyway, this is an interesting discussion. 1. Is this a linear relationship? Does magnitude or duration of suffering continue to scale with sense of satisfaction or general quality? If not, then how are we to judge when it's too much or too little, either for ourselves or others? Or perhaps we just 'know' based on subjective suffering. So then it follows, what if someone suffers just as much while writing with AI as another person writing without? Say for the sake of argument that the proto-cyborg author would have otherwise never finished a work. 2. Should someone who writes formulaic genre fiction have less a sense of pride in his work? Let's say he can churn out ten novels a year with serviceable prose, it's an easy gig for him, and he has many fans. I think what I get stuck on, even though I vaguely agree with the sentiment, is that effort/agony doesn't necessarily scale with quality. Similarly, emotion IN doesn't have to correlate with emotion OUT. "Dude, your song saved my life." v.s. "We thought the word sounded funny and wanted to make a song out of it." If I was in to testing the limits of AI and driving its abilities to make content, my response to the arbitrary requirements imposed and general negative consensus from the writing community would be to shrug and say: "Huh, guess it's not art then. Problem solved. Anyway, this one with the feline hybrid space marines written/assisted by a Lovecraft-Austen trained AI is $9.95... Oh no, I don't have the approval of other writers? Time to make my own community. After all, I'm not really a writer. And the readers? Well their opinion is 70% based on the cover art and title, so I think I'll be fine." Or a more brief way of putting it is: does Martin Scorsese's opinion matter? https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/04/martin-scorsese-says-marvel-movies-are-not-cinema
A possibly intersting adjunct to this discussion (?)— I said some time ago, on one of these AI threads, that a computer operates sort-of (very loosely) like the conscious mind but one of the big prbolems with AI is that there's no analogy for an unconscious for it to dialogue with. One that thinks in a very different fashion (to use a very crude analogy, in parallel rather than in serial), that can think much much faster, and that can run cirlces in certain ways around a regular computer. And then I watch a video last night about quantum computers. Shit, I thought this was still just a science fiction thing, or purely theoretical, I didn't realize there are actual prototyes already!! Apparently rather than just the simple binary on-off (ones and zeros) of our familair computers, they have several other states they can achieve. And from a few other things that were said I got the sudden distinct impression that here is something in certain ways (far from a perfect analogy of course) like a computer subconscious. Link a regular computer to one of these bad boys and allow them to dialogue constantly, perhaps with the regular computer in charge (as our conscious mind generally is when we're awake) and the quantum running 'on the back channel' providing constant assistance. Or maybe the other way around, who knows? Or let it learn how to best link together (and possibly make us irrelevant in the process). Quantum-assisted AI. It either means the greatest thing since Tang, or the end of the world. Or maybe both. Stay tuned for further developments as our end speedily approaches on a thousand fronts.
Lol, you seem to want to turn it into a scientific formula! You don't go around deliberately seeking suffering and trauma, at least not the big overpowering versions. As I've said (several times now I believe), that stuff happens with or without our consent, and if we're lucky we can grow and learn from the experience. The only kind of suffering you seek out deliberately is the small controllable kinds, like the discipline, hard work, practice, critique, and lots of rejections. These are small everyday kinds of sacrifice we can make to pave the way toward developing as a better writer. Or, maybe just sit in the shade and sip lattes and mojitos, have your dinner brought to you on a silver platter every day promptly at 5:00, binge on all your favorite netflix shows, and hope your life turns out decent. Buy which I mean avoid all manner of hard work and suffering. When life is a vacation it gets pretty boring pretty quick.
But at least finishing medical school will get you a pretty good job with lots of money. Novels on the other hand... hehe...
Living a life rich in experiences of all kinds is fine fodder. Toss it all into the compost heap of creativity and sooner or later it will be fit to fertilize a painting, a novel, a costume for Carmen, or a theory on bipolar disorder. Romanticising artistic suffering is a less refined form of fertilizer.
