The Writer's Curse (part two)

Many great writers have struggled with depression yet produced brilliant work while under the influence of the black dog.

Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, Raymond Chandler, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut… all have attempted suicide due to their depression, some successfully.  And it’s not only well known authors. Many a struggling writer has died by their own hand, unpublished and unfulfilled.

Most writers have a negative internal monologue, a little voice inside their heads telling them that their work is no good and they’ll never be more than a hobby writer, if that. That pretty much comes with the territory, but for some it’s so much more than an occasional niggling voice. For many it’s a constant battle, day after day, year after year. Artists, more than most occupations, have to achieve some form of approval for their work and rejection can cut deeply. That’s before we consider that an artist who doesn’t sell is an artist who doesn’t eat. No pressure there then.

It may only be based on anecdotal evidence but it certainly appears that writers and other artists are more susceptible to depression than the average man in the street. But why? Why would someone who obviously possesses such a fertile imagination be more likely to suffer this crippling illness? Perhaps it’s because of that overdriven imagination itself, feeding the fears that the worst that could happen might come true.

Maybe it’s because writing is such a solitary pursuit, providing the author with little chance to socialise in their working hours. I’ve said before in this blog that I’ve surprised myself since becoming a full-time writer by going for three or four days at a time without speaking to anyone apart from my long-suffering Beloved. The lack of exercise and natural light in our normal working routine doesn’t help either. And of course poets and fiction writers regularly open up their souls to be inspected by others as part of their job. We all have to suffer for our art but if you pick at an emotional scab then you can’t be surprised when it remains raw and sore.

Maybe it’s karma? Maybe if you have a talent in imagination then you have to pay for it emotionally, in the same way that Stephen Hawking has phenomenal intellect yet is physically so afflicted?

But could it be that they (or should I say we, as I’ve suffered my share of black days too) aren’t statistically any more prone to depression than the rest of the population? Maybe artists just show it more? Perhaps we should look at it from a different angle. Rather than thinking of the writer as being depressed, maybe the depression brings out the writer in some people? Pain has always been a powerful catalyst for art. Perhaps, as some medics have recently suggested, depression could be good for us.

Maybe it’s time to pat the black dog on the head and say, ‘Good boy’?

© Shaun Finnie 2013