The Secret of Creativity Is Not Suffering, It Is Pleasure
Three rules for the creative life: avoid suffering, embrace difficulty, seek out pleasure
I have spent most of the last two decades teaching the art of writing. And over the years, one thing I have encountered again and again is the myth that creativity necessarily entails suffering. This myth has deep cultural roots. We are smitten with the idea of the tortured artist. We love the idea that creativity is close to madness, that it takes us to the brink of the abyss.
This idea no doubt has a certain romantic charm. Sometimes I’ve fallen under its spell myself. After all, the idea that we are suffering can make us feel our labours are significant and weighty. It can give us a sense that what we are doing is meaningful.
But as something to emulate, the model of the suffering artist is next to useless. A. L. Kennedy, writing in the Guardian, puts it like this:
I have been trying to write for at least a quarter of a century, and I can say very firmly that in my experience, suffering is largely of no bloody use to anyone, and definitely not a prerequisite for creation. If an artist has managed to take something appalling and make it into art, that’s because the artist is an artist, not because something appalling is…
