Damaged Goods Part 2

So, a couple of years ago (my, how time flies!) I wrote this article, questioning whether some kind of personal damage or substance abuse problem was a prerequisite for good writing.  As someone who used to do her best writing buzzed, drunk or miserable, I thought it seemed pretty likely - and research was certainly on my side; so many of the "greats" battled depression and/or drug and alcohol abuse.  Of course, when I wrote that article, I wasn't exactly happy.  I wasn't unhappy, as such, but, on the surface, my life was missing most of the things that I felt it needed (IE my own place, a decent job, somewhere to write) and one of the things that I knew I wanted (wuv, twoo wuv), so overall, the best I could call myself was discontent.  Having been to both ends of the happiness spectrum, I have reached a conclusion:

Writing sad is easier.  Writing happy is better.

The quality of one's writing relies on other factors, skill and effort, to be exact.  Strong emotions and strong emotional memory are definitely mixed in there, but I think for fiction writers especially, writing should generate emotion, not the other way around.

I write easier when I feel dissatisfied or ill-at-ease.  Words just seem to pour out of me then, whereas, when I'm happy and feeling generally content, it's more of a struggle.  One of the pluses to being human, though, is that we're never satisfied, not really.  The human race never would have progressed if we could be satisfied with just food and shelter.  We would still be living in caves.  But we're built to want more, no matter what we have (iPhones are a perfect example of this; how can a phone which takes pictures, allows you to edit them, has Internet access, games and lets you watch movies not be good enough?  How do they keep marketing new editions of these things?)  

So, to clarify, I don't mean that your writing will be better if you're happier, I mean that it's better to write while happy.  Because, in the end, your writing will be (or, I should say can and should be) just as good as it would be if you wrote while sad/angry/depressed/drunk, but - and this is the important bit - you'll be happy.

Damaged = Goods?

As much as it seems like an odd thing to admit, I think a small part of what has always driven me to write is the preconception of any writer as this damaged, broken being, one with vices and eccentricities and a sort of depressed misanthropy that can't be found among the members of other professions. I know this isn't really accurate. I'm sure there are plenty of writers out there who are normalish, well adjusted people - but to me, it seems there's some power in being damaged.

In an effort to provide some evidence of what we all know to be anecdotally considered true - that the majority of writers battle with some kind of addiction - I typed writers vice into a Google search. What came up were a number of articles, including the one excerpted below, which suggest that well over half of 19th and 20th Century writers were, if not alcoholics, at least well on their way there.

...of six Americans awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, four (Eugene O'Neill, Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner and Hemingway) were alcoholics, and a fifth (John Steinbeck) drank heavily.
See the rest of the article here.

I don't know. I'm not an alcoholic, not by a long way and I'm proud to say that I wrote all of Aigaion Girl completely sober - but then, I find myself wondering why I'm proud of that. I mean, don't most people do their jobs completely sober? Why is it unusual that I should have done so? But it is. Hopefully it won't always be, but of the books I've actually finished, A/G is the only one I've completed over the influence.

But alcoholism and addiction aren't really what this article is about - at least that's not how it started. I'm more interested in writers' demons and whether or not they are what drive us to write in the first place. Again, I can only speak from my perspective, but I think that maybe we're all a little... I don't know. Off. I don't think that people who see the way the world that everyone else does can write - or maybe they don't want to. We write the world the way it is, the way it was, the way it should be and any way it could be, because I think most writers perceive all of these possibilities simultaneously, and I think that maybe it's the stress of this quadruple+ perception that makes many writers miserable enough to be driven to drink.

I write the most, and the best, when I'm stuck - when I feel it necessary to escape my life and can't think of a better way to do it. The mirth and levity I feel toward the end of a project almost always lead to writers' block and I often have to wait until I'm ill-at-ease again (or, as I used to do, hit the sauce) for it to go away.

I'm not trying to make it sound like all writers are horrible, depressed alcoholic hermits and I'm certainly not condoning or encouraging substance abuse. I think, actually, that what I'm trying to do is convey my feelings of gratitude toward the universe that I was born with the ability to turn the sensations and feelings that should be entirely useless to anyone into something productive and, if I'm lucky, beautiful. That there are people who can take pain and confusion and misanthropy and turn it into art is inspiring.

As I've said, this is all from my own perspective. I really don't know how it is for other writers, but I would love to hear your thoughts.