Hi,
A recent poll of the UK concluded that being a novelist would be the ideal job for more people than any other. That led to some debate on The Guardian last week. First came an article about how writing a real novel HAS TO BE a descent into madness, forsaking family and friends and poking and dissecting the fragile inner turmoil of the writer's psyche. Then followed a response from some YA writers talking about what a great community writers have and how supported they have felt.
What do you all feel? Is writing a slow torture only tolerable because not writing is even less endurable, or is it a fulfilling muse and by and large a pleasure? Is the traditional model of the literary writer as a passionate but troubled loner becoming outdated in our time of total interconnectivity or does that only apply to writers of genre fiction who will usually have it slightly easier than us? Will truly great work only ever come from truly troubled individuals?
A recent poll of the UK concluded that being a novelist would be the ideal job for more people than any other. That led to some debate on The Guardian last week. First came an article about how writing a real novel HAS TO BE a descent into madness, forsaking family and friends and poking and dissecting the fragile inner turmoil of the writer's psyche. Then followed a response from some YA writers talking about what a great community writers have and how supported they have felt.
What do you all feel? Is writing a slow torture only tolerable because not writing is even less endurable, or is it a fulfilling muse and by and large a pleasure? Is the traditional model of the literary writer as a passionate but troubled loner becoming outdated in our time of total interconnectivity or does that only apply to writers of genre fiction who will usually have it slightly easier than us? Will truly great work only ever come from truly troubled individuals?