After a recent discussion with a friend, I started wondering exactly what people do, through both choice and necessity, for the sake of their chosen art form. My friend believes that you should suffer for your art, which to me seems either extreme or perhaps somewhat hyperbolic; nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder if it’s at the very least a little bit true. I don’t mean direct suffering in a self-torture, deliberately making things difficult for yourself sort of sense, because that really would be extreme, but maybe there are things in life that people frequently and willing sacrifice in order to better themselves and their work - now, is that suffering for your art, or is that something else? It’s a bit of a social stereotype that writers are these off-the-wall characters who can be really turbulent in terms of how available they are, in terms of both emotion and time. It seems writers have a fairly unimpressive and off-putting list of credentials, some of which are true, I ...
Writing about writing, or trying to at least...