The tortured artist trope is one I don’t agree with. The idea is simple: with great pain comes great art.
The thing is this, we get better at what we practice. To take myself for example, I am good at writing post-break-up poems, because for a long time that is what I wrote.
The ‘tortured artist’ didn’t make those poems better—the artist did. I worked on them, over and over, crafting good, if not limited, poems. They were the ones I edited, the ones I work-shopped, the ones I gave at readings.
The pain provided influence, perhaps motivation. I used it as focal point to create.
But this created a new problem where I had to learn to write non-post-break-up poems, or even wider, non-personal-relationship poems—because that is was all I was practicing.
Practice makes permanent.
Coach
I played rugby for a half-minute (another post-break-up choice) and Coach would say to to us:
Practice makes permanent.
Didn’t he mean ‘perfect’? No. Perfect practice makes perfect. How you practice reflects on how you perform.
And ‘practice’ is something we do as writers. (Something I recommend doing consciously.)
When you only make art when you are in the dark places of life of it is going to be better than when you try elsewhere. You have to learn, to practice.
The thing is, the best poems I write are about breakup and heartache, not because of my pain, but because these are the ones I’ve written the most.
More practice = better art.
If I put the time into love poems or springtime poems that would be as good.
No, there is no special insight a tortured artist has, only focus that drives creation, specific creation. You can write, create, paint without the pain. You need practice.
Do you know how many happy horror writers I know? A lot. Because what we write doesn’t need to reflect on who we are when we write it.
Sure you pull from experience, but we are not bound to it. I don’t need to be going through a loss to write about loss.
And we shouldn’t think that either