What role does insanity play ... ?

[Mickie]

... in the aspect of creative writing? I've been called numerous things. Insane, mad as a hatter, a candidate for shock treatment..., the list goes on and on. But I'm not the only one. There's a history of good writers being drug addicts, mentally ill, and basically unbalanced. Is this a part of why their writing is good? Or is it just a side effect of living in your head too much?

 

[TheWriter]

It might have something to do with their ability before they go crazy. I saw a show here (in Australia) where there was a satire on drug abuse, pleading with all kids who wanted to become drug addicted rock stars to "learn to play the guitar first". If they were good authors, maybe drugs or insanity merely inspires their creative process.

 

[SpectreT]

Living in their head too much.

The roles of a storyteller are many, and the greatest of these roles is to force others to think in ways they never have, to accept ideas outside what is common or "normal". I, myself, am a deviant (sexually speaking), and therefore "not normal". I've always thought people need to be "woken up", people need to question the very basic tenets upon which they live their lives. The way they accept the most preposterous notions as facts of existence, the way they don't understand animals at all. The old Socratic ideal, taken to extremes: "Know Thyself". Deep enough questioning and self-knowledge are seen as crazy, especially when such thoughts are shared.

Then again, I find Professional Wrestling to be highly entertaining, and wish to make it my job someday soon, so I'm not sure I'm the best judge of the brilliance/insanity edge.....

 

[MissTaken]

For what it is worth, her is my most humble opinion.

I do believe that certain personality characteristics associated with those that are seen as "mad as a hatter" lend themselves to good creative writing. It has been my experience that these individuals are able to think outside the social norm ....thinking "outside of the box." That is not to say that one must be mentally ill in order to be a good writer, but the fact that some are seen or even diagnosed with illness, isn't surprising.

Some of those great writers with addictions were actually attempting to cope with the stress of their genious. Then other writers had addictive personalities long before they began writing. That relationship seems almost parasytical? co dependent? Potentially, a cycle.

Many artists of different genres have been viewed as crazy or have histories of substance abuse as well...painters, musicians...

Hmmmm an interesting observation...and wish I had an answer.

 

[REDWAVE]

What? Me, Insane?

Hey, you don't have to be crazy to be a writer, but it sure helps. Especially in this crummy society, where writers tend to be grossly underpaid and underappreciated for their creative efforts. If you're not already insane when you become a writer, it'll make you that way soon enough!


And that goes double for LE authors. Not only are we not getting paid, we're writing cheap smut stories that most readers just want to jack off to. They don't care about plot, character, or theme. They just want hot, steamy action, and lots of it!


It's a dirty job, but I guess someone's got to do it.

 

[letsallgetlaid]

And that goes double for LE authors. Not only are we not getting paid, we're writing cheap smut stories that most readers just want to jack off to. They don't care about plot, character, or theme. They just want hot, steamy action, and lots of it!

Here here!


But I think that living in your head too much ads to the insanity that is already there. It is one of those viscious cycle things.

 

[Quiet_Cool]

Living in your head too much...

That was well-said Mickie...
Don't all of you live in your head just a little too much. I think if we went through Literotica and read every author, the ones who said yes would produce better work. THe work itself tends ot be self-examining, hence the need to write in the first place. It's often not expression of one's views, but the journey through one's own mind. Am I rambling? The point is, if you already know what you want to say, it tends to be less interesting to hear as it's spoken, even to the speaker. It's when it's new that we actually become enthralled in it.
When we live in our head, we tend to examine parts of ourselves that make us who we are and are often not even considered for exploration by ordinary people. That goes with the territory. We're writers, overselfindulgence is part of the deal. It's bred into us, and if we fight it, we're fighting what makes us who we are.
As far as insanity goes...the word itself tends to mean "Outside of the norm." A rediculous idea, that abnormal means you're sick, especially when you consider some of the things that "normal" people do... What made Poe a great author was that, while he may have been insane, he wasn't afraid to write anything, no matter how far-fetched it was. No fear meant blatant honesty. He held nothing back, just laid it out and said, "Well, there it is." We saw his thoughts in a very true form. Insane or not, his mind still functioned the same on it's deepest levels, as tends to be the case. What he wrote was as real as what anybody else would write, he was just talented enough, and fearless anough, to drive the point all the way home. There's truth in his work most people would be afraid to admit they ever even thought about.

 

[Quiet_Cool]

As for living in your head...

Go for it, if you like, but remember that it breeds alienation, take it from an old pro, and that tends to breed accentricities.
ANd intelligence can be an enemy in this sense. Insane peoploe are supposedly intelligent, but doesn't it make more sense that intelligent people tend to go insane? I think it does. Analyse things too much, we'll all be severing our ears and mailing them to our secret loves. (Van Gogh did that, incase it threw anyone off)

 

[RisiaSkye]

Living in your head, and the curse of intelligence

But isn't that what it's all about, ultimately? That's what makes erotica so great--it's a perfect place to explore the lines between pleasure and pain, kink and perversion, exciting and endangering, eccentric and insane. It's an art about the intricacies of intimacy and the relationship between body and mind. What could be more germane to human experience, or more profoundly revealing of ourselves?

Writing, for me, is like self-guided therapy. Instead of paying someone a couple hundred bucks to sit in an armchair and ask me leading questions, I ask the leading questions. I imagine aspects of myself as whole characters separate from my lived identity, who I can view without the judgements I pass on my real thoughts, feelings, and actions. Then, I put them in situations I think/wonder/worry/fantasize about, and see where it leads me.

I feel compelled to write, to articulate my identity and observations in order to figure out what they are and what they mean to me. Thinking about something, following out the seemingly random chains of associations that come up when we experience or observe the world around us, is a very different and much easier thing than trying to put it into language. The struggle it takes to put it into words and share it with others requires a kind of dedication and perpetual vulnerability that most people neither have nor want.
Does that make me crazy? Self indulgent? Overly analytical? In the end, does it matter? I never end up where I think I will, but it's the journey that makes it interesting.

Do you know why ignorance is supposedly bliss? Because extended analysis leads to realizing/learning/observing things that one would be happier not knowing--because what one learns disrupts the simplistic illusions we adhere to in order to form connections with others and live together as a society, constantly jockeying for power and position. And once you disrupt your own complacent acceptance of what "everybody knows," the world is a brand new, complicated, and ultimately unknowable place. Most people would prefer to live a lie they understand than a truth they can't comprehend.

 

[SpectreT]

She just said what I did earlier, but with far more grace and eloquence.

I am uncharacteristically humbled. (too bad there's not a "smirk" smiley....)

 

[RisiaSkye]

She just said what I did earlier, but with far more grace and eloquence.

I am uncharacteristically humbled. (too bad there's not a "smirk" smiley....)

Heh. Or, to put it another way: "She just agreed with me, but with diarrhea of the keyboard."

So, thanks for what I think was a compliment. But save your humility for someone more deserving, okay? Unless you were just smirking through some sarcasm at my expense--in which case ...

,
RS

 

[Quiet_Cool]

Diarhea of the keyboard?

Sorry, I prefer the term "literary elephantitis." It just has more tact...and less reference to bowel movements...LOL

 

[Cruel2BKind]

Woohoo!

This is my first ancient buried treasure, it was on page 1001, and I dug it up, please comment on it!

 

[TE999]

Woot! This is a golden oldie. I don't recognize anyone posting except quiet_cool and he's still around.

As to the subject matter, it's been said there's a fine line between genius and insanity and I think a lot of creative people wobble over the yellow lines a lot. Some go from mildly eccentric to outrageous to bat-shit crazy in a lifetime. Generally speaking, I would rather live a life of creativity than be a plodding old horse working the back forty.

 

[GinaTina]

If I didn't write, I'd go crazy.

 

[sr71plt]

Crazy? Maybe. I've more often heard that gays and jews have the edge.

 

[3113]

Do you really want to romanticize serious mental problems?

Did we have to dig up this old chestnut? Okay, boys and girls listen up and listen good....There are plenty of writers--and this includes famous writers like Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Dumas, Stephen King, etc. etc.--who were (are) perfectly sane, perfectly normal (outside of being writers which is considered an odd sort of job); they had (have) perfectly normal families, live(d) perfectly normal lives. So it is false, a narcissistic, mastabatory myth, and a pretty shameful--I think--way of "boasting" how cool you are to say you write and therefore you must not be "normal" Shock! Horror! Please! The only thing that makes a writer cool is if they write cool stuff. Sane or insane, if you write shit, you're not cool. And if you are writing shit, being some kind of poser-wanna-be-mental case won't make you a better writer.

Write good, or go home. No one gives a shit about your mental state.

Here's another news flash: people who are REALLY crazy--like schizophrenic, massively manic-depressive, etc...they sometimes write down some very cool stuff, but very, very, VERY few of them ever write anything that gets published. Consider: F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was an alcoholic but otherwise completely sane, wrote what might be the great American novel. His wife, who was very much insane (as well as an alcoholic), never did or finished anything. She ended up in a mental institution.

Still sure you want to argue that "insanity" makes you a great writer? Still sure you want to be insane?

Finally, last point, arguably, very few people are mentally or emotionally problem free. So what classifies one as "insane?" Depression, even leading to suicide is so common that I don't think that's "insane." Nor wanting to be a hermit and shut-in except in cases involving extreme paranoia (agoraphobia can be cured), nor even mild manic-depressive behavior or minor "eccentric" behavior. And by the way, many writers I know now take medicine for their problems and not only live normal lives but say they write more and better; go figure. My point is, people with these problems don't get institutionalized as "insane." So are you "insane" or do you just have a neurosis that your non-writer neighbor also has? One that anti-depressants will cure?

In all, I can name two writers I'd classify as insane, no argument. Philip K. Dick and Sylvia Plath. I'm sure there are more, but when you really start to think about it you find very few writers were or are that crazy--at least not any more than in any other profession. So, I'm sorry, Cruel, but this topic is not a buried treasure. It's bullshit. It's something beginning writers like to say so they can pretend they're all misunderstood, insane geniuses.

Just to add, you may wonder why this topic pisses me off so much--it's because mental problems are no joke, and should never, ever be romanticized, which is exactly what this topic does. It romanticizes "insanity" by making it seem like it leads to heightened brilliance and creativity; in some cases it can do that, but in most cases, even with a creative bonus, insanity is a horrible, miserable, painful and agonizing affliction that destroys a person's life and that of those they love who also must live with it. Romanticizing it this way is obscene.

 

[sr71plt]

His wife, who was very much insane (as well as an alcoholic), never did or finished anything.

I thought her Save Me the Waltz was pretty good--especially when read with Tender Is the Night, which took much of its material from Zelda's earlier book.

 

[JackLuis]

What you say is factually true 3113. Insanity is in the eye of the beholder, witness Texas and Rick Perry. Somehow he gets reelected in a, probably, fair election but he doesn't appear to me to have a full deck in his shuffle.

An insane writer would probably not be able to concentrate long enough to turn out 200-400 pages, with a creditable story arc.

This does not mean that the Crazy writers, of which there appears to be a plethora, aren't capable of churning out hundreds of stories. Witness the horde of stories here.

So the insane and the merely crazy are different.

Every writer must be CRAZY, if they think anyone else is going to like their stuff, She/He must be crazy to believe that a romance, with benefits, or no, with no promotion will get them discovered.

Or drunk.

 

[GinaTina]

Wowwwwwww...

 

[mynameisben]

Finally, last point, arguably, very few people are mentally or emotionally problem free. So what classifies one as "insane?" Depression, even leading to suicide is so common that I don't think that's "insane." Nor wanting to be a hermit and shut-in except in cases involving extreme paranoia (agoraphobia can be cured), nor even mild manic-depressive behavior or minor "eccentric" behavior. And by the way, many writers I know now take medicine for their problems and not only live normal lives but say they write more and better; go figure. My point is, people with these problems don't get institutionalized as "insane." So are you "insane" or do you just have a neurosis that your non-writer neighbor also has? One that anti-depressants will cure?

In all, I can name two writers I'd classify as insane, no argument. Philip K. Dick and Sylvia Plath. I'm sure there are more, but when you really start to think about it you find very few writers were or are that crazy--at least not any more than in any other profession. So, I'm sorry, Cruel, but this topic is not a buried treasure. It's bullshit. It's something beginning writers like to say so they can pretend they're all misunderstood, insane geniuses.

Just to add, you may wonder why this topic pisses me off so much--it's because mental problems are no joke, and should never, ever be romanticized, which is exactly what this topic does. It romanticizes "insanity" by making it seem like it leads to heightened brilliance and creativity; in some cases it can do that, but in most cases, even with a creative bonus, insanity is a horrible, miserable, painful and agonizing affliction that destroys a person's life and that of those they love who also must live with it. Romanticizing it this way is obscene.

I could not have said this any better.

But I would like to add there is very little value in identifying oneself or anybody else as "insane." How many of the millions of people who sling that word about every day are professionally qualified to make such a judgment? Precious few. Which licensed psychiatrist can point to a paragraph, chapter, or even an entire body of work and definitively say, "Yep. This guy is exactly one marble short of being normal?" No one.

There does not exist a threshold which, once crossed, identifies an author or anyone else as insane. People think differently, that's all. And thank god for that! For genius and idiot alike are capable of wildly new ideas (or at the very least, of inspiring them), from which we rather pedestrian middle-of-the-bell-curve intellects may benefit and enjoy. Normal folk (whatever the hell "normal" means) are capable of feats of creativity as well. It's just different, and that's a good thing too.

Normal and Insane are elitist ideas, labels that are every bit as insufferable as Nigger and Homo. This is the 21st century; it's time we stop using them.

 

[ShadeyB]

I think it has as much to do with the medium as anything. Have any of you sat down and done any real hard-core writing with an old manual typewriter? It lends itself quite well to alcoholism and emotional outbursts of artistic twattle.

Really, you get going and after just a couple minutes your fingers are sore. But you just got into the plot, so you can't stop now. Eh, have drink and write a page more maybe. Then the you realize one of your characters is pissing even you off, so you take another drink, maybe light a cigarette, and furrow your brow-- "I will write you ass into the ground, bitch!" Ah, now for a break, but by this time your several pages in, and the typewriter itself is getting inside your brain. That damned noise won't go away! Its in there! Tap, tap, tappity, taptap, clack, tap, DING! Ziiiiiiip! And you just can't stop it, so you drown it out with booze and cigarettes... and more tapping. Oo, but louder so you can't hear the noise in your skull! Mash those keys, TAP, TAP, TAPPY, TAP, TAPPITY, DING! ZIIIPPP, CLUNK, until you knock the damned typewriter off your desk. That's when you realize you just finished a pack of Pall Malls and a pint of Wild Turkey, and your friends and family are standing in the doorway, jaws on the ground.
But the cat still likes you, so it's ok.

Really, when you write on a typewriter, like many of the old greats did, its a labor intensive ordeal. You throw your all into it, but no one else gets it, so you must be crazy.

 

[hottchic]

I think the people talking about 'out of the box' thinking have it right.

Writers who are accused of being on the lunitic fringe might simply be expressing ideas which are unusual or dare I say it unpopular.

The problem I believe is that sanity and normality become confused.

Sanity - is to reason within a logically consistant framework using assumptions which reasonably reflect aspects of what the individual is trying to reason about.

whereas

Normality - as any statistician knows simply reffers to how close any given behavior is to the average.

I suspect that many behaviors or ideas which some people might call crazy are simply behaviors or ideas which are outside those people's comfort zones

 

[driphoney]

It may be an old chestnut around here, but it pre-dates me, so I'm glad its been dug up. After all, nothing much new is going on here these days. And I'm not sure it romanticizes the subject, at least I'm not trying to do that.

I haven't been doing any fiction writing in a long time, so I don't qualify for this convo . . . I might be nutty though I don't think rolleyes I'm insane, however; it's taken a lot of years (too many) for me to accept myself and to see myself as a creative person. My mind wanders just slightly outside of the box. I've noticed that when I'm totally uninhibited, totally free, I do my best writing. Perhaps those who live even further on the edges, live in that "zone," find a more pure way to view and express what they see. Oddly, and this fascinates me, the super creative (and insane? isn't insanity often a bit of a sliding scale, not all or nothing?) see reality clearer than those deemed "normal."

I really need to go back and read all the comments. I'm probably repeating.

(Blame the wine!)