The Myth Of The Tortured Writer
Do we have to be sad to write well? It’s one of the questions that has been asked for decades about writers and artists as so much creative work seems to come from a place of pain.
Often, when you read or listen to interviews with writers they can choose to dwell on the obstacles they have had to overcome, the great tragedies in their lives that meant that they were inspired to write. Their unhappy experiences that they felt they could only make their peace with through the cathartic process of writing — loss, heartbreak, poverty and so on. It all seems rather bleak.
We look back at great writers of the past and read about their tortured souls, the Sylvia Plath's, the Ernest Hemmingway's who seemed to use their sadness to inspire their creativity. There are books, films, and songs about how being sad or suffering in some way is essential to keep a certain creative fire going, and when a person is happy and content their inner furies calm, and therefore that creative spark is snuffed out.
Can writers not be happy?
The myth of the tortured writer is something that should be firmly put to bed in these modern day times. It seems almost that it is a rite of passage to have suffered the insufferable or to have lived through sadness, madness, or some kind of torture to be able to create something unique and beautiful. But this is just not the case.
It is a writers job to be creative and imaginative and to conjure exquisite worlds and beautiful, original characters that we fall in love with, laugh with, cry with and everything in between. However, a writer doesn’t have to have experienced loss to write about loss successfully, just as they don’t have to be a boy wizard to create a bestselling series about, well, a boy wizard.
The myth of the tortured writer is almost insulting. It suggests that writers don’t have the capability to write fiction. That they must have, in some way, felt everything that their characters feel and couldn’t possibly create worlds where things happen that have never occurred to them in real life.
It places limitations on the writer, it takes the good old saying ‘write what you know’ and makes it so literal and binding that if writers were to believe it, it could chain them, restrict them, quieten them so that they don’t embrace their creative imaginations, and don’t explore possibilities outside of their own experiences.
Creativity and imagination are two beautiful, exciting things, and to insist that they come from a place of torture, or that they are only genuine and worth our attention or respect if they do is to do the art of writing a great disservice.
Writers do not have to be unhappy to create meaningful art. In fact, the contemporary writer would do well to steer clear of such a stereotype. Nowadays writers are expected to be so much more than just writers; they need to be their own brand. If your brand is the type to sit unwashed and wailing in a darkened room all day you might have some trouble selling your book.
Now that’s not to say that writers shouldn’t experience pain and misfortune and that when we do, we shouldn’t use these feelings to explore and make peace with what we feel. It’s just that seeking out sadness, wallowing in it, or creating it to live up to a stereotype that is no longer necessary is only going to restrict writers and perpetuate a myth that isn’t useful or relevant and will probably end up doing writers more harm than good.
Bethany Cadman
Author of Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers
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