Are Writers Crazy?
This is an interesting subject.
Stephen King said (I use him a lot, it's just there was a time when I did a lot of research on him and know a bit about him) in an article--this after a youth did the unthinkable to students in Virginia Tech--about if his college writing would raise red flags. Steven said he probably would have been tabbed as mentally ill.
The stories that come from a horror writer could definitely be used or recounted in a police report or news article as evidence against a person who commits murder, or becomes a serial killer. Some might say, "Oh yeah, that's no surprise."
Some writing content certainly shows the output for potential violence of a person. There's the kid who is bullied and writes about getting even, he can't be on the football team, he's not "cool," everyone picks on him. He writes about characters that have the attributes he wants and one day polishes them and gets them published. He used his energy to turn around what happened to him. But some may go the other way. They write and get that high from feeling what they are writing about, and then they want more. They go out and do what they wrote about.
How can you tell the difference between someone who is just writing to escape and someone who wants to take it to the next level?
You can't. As I've talked about in another post: we daydream, some get possessed (wink) and we go into worlds and talk to characters in our minds. We create scenes and scenarios that may make it into our work--and some may not. Either way, we had fun on the ride (some don’t like where they go sometimes, but you can use those tidbits, too). The thing to remember is we do it for our sanity, as well. We relive things in our head, live portions of life over that we couldn't do right in the real world. We are heroes, villains, lovers, supernatural beings that never die. And the list goes on and on. Each time we edit we are back in that world. We finish a story and start the next and we are back in our created worlds.
Can we loose ourselves and go nuts? Of course. Sometimes we are functioning nuts, sometimes one or two may go off the deep end. But it's no more than anyone else, it's just we embrace our craziness.
Now, of course this is a deeper subject than this post. Some writers go very far into it. Things we are working with and do research on and explore and live through become real and the writer can no longer differentiate between the two and they meld together.
Here is an interesting article about 10 like that: http://brainz.org/10-writers-who-were-mentally-disturbed/
Take away our writing and we will go equally as crazy. Think about it. If this is our release, our escape, then when it’s taken away there is no release, no escape--just bottled up emotions. Very dangerous.
Here's the Stephen King article: http://www.ew.com/article/2007/04/23/stephen-king-virginia-tech
Keep writing.
WCM
Stephen King said (I use him a lot, it's just there was a time when I did a lot of research on him and know a bit about him) in an article--this after a youth did the unthinkable to students in Virginia Tech--about if his college writing would raise red flags. Steven said he probably would have been tabbed as mentally ill.
The stories that come from a horror writer could definitely be used or recounted in a police report or news article as evidence against a person who commits murder, or becomes a serial killer. Some might say, "Oh yeah, that's no surprise."
Some writing content certainly shows the output for potential violence of a person. There's the kid who is bullied and writes about getting even, he can't be on the football team, he's not "cool," everyone picks on him. He writes about characters that have the attributes he wants and one day polishes them and gets them published. He used his energy to turn around what happened to him. But some may go the other way. They write and get that high from feeling what they are writing about, and then they want more. They go out and do what they wrote about.
How can you tell the difference between someone who is just writing to escape and someone who wants to take it to the next level?
You can't. As I've talked about in another post: we daydream, some get possessed (wink) and we go into worlds and talk to characters in our minds. We create scenes and scenarios that may make it into our work--and some may not. Either way, we had fun on the ride (some don’t like where they go sometimes, but you can use those tidbits, too). The thing to remember is we do it for our sanity, as well. We relive things in our head, live portions of life over that we couldn't do right in the real world. We are heroes, villains, lovers, supernatural beings that never die. And the list goes on and on. Each time we edit we are back in that world. We finish a story and start the next and we are back in our created worlds.
Can we loose ourselves and go nuts? Of course. Sometimes we are functioning nuts, sometimes one or two may go off the deep end. But it's no more than anyone else, it's just we embrace our craziness.
Now, of course this is a deeper subject than this post. Some writers go very far into it. Things we are working with and do research on and explore and live through become real and the writer can no longer differentiate between the two and they meld together.
Here is an interesting article about 10 like that: http://brainz.org/10-writers-who-were-mentally-disturbed/
Take away our writing and we will go equally as crazy. Think about it. If this is our release, our escape, then when it’s taken away there is no release, no escape--just bottled up emotions. Very dangerous.
Here's the Stephen King article: http://www.ew.com/article/2007/04/23/stephen-king-virginia-tech
Keep writing.
WCM
Comments