The Myth of the Tormented Genius

Straight from the Tortured Writers Department

My mental health has been in rough shape lately, yet paradoxically, it’s been the most productive stretch of writing I’ve had in over a year, really since my mother died. For the first time in my creative life, suffering and creativity have walked hand in hand, and it’s been both bewildering and oddly illuminating.

There’s a persistent fallacy in the artistic world: the notion that to create something worthwhile, the artist must suffer, or must live in a state of perpetual despair or exquisite despondency.

But in truth, I’ve always found my greatest surges of inspiration on balmy days, when I’m traveling, when life feels expansive and the world hums with wonder. Spring and summer have been my creative seasons; autumn and winter are times when even a flicker of productivity feels hard-won. Yes, grief has been a constant companion this past year, but for most of my life, I have been a relatively happy and content man. A simple man in some ways, perhaps, but resilient, and always eager to navigate the obstacles before me.

Yet when I sat down to review this month’s work, I was astonished by what I had been able to produce. While writing, I hadn’t sensed its shape or strength, which, admittedly, is usually the case. As part of my writing process, I’ve learned to make a quiet pact with myself: just show up. Write without judgment, let the words come, and leave the critic and my hat as an editor at the door. I reserve one day a week for editing, combing through the unruly drafts to salvage what’s usable, polish what’s promising, or reshape what’s stubborn. This rhythm keeps perfectionism at bay and allows me to savor the act of creation itself. I leave the tortured artist routine to the Bukowskis of the world; I’m just not interested in wrestling with the creative process.

I’ve never been one to romanticize the suffering artist. I push back against the myth that Virginia Woolf was a brilliant writer because of her mental illness; she was brilliant in spite of it. And yet, each novel extracted something from her that ultimately left her hollowed out. It’s no wonder people link her genius to her fragility. As I revised my own work this week, I found myself wondering: was this burst of productivity fueled by my depression, or did it emerge in defiance of it?

The truth, I think, is more generous than either extreme. Suffering doesn’t make us artists, but it can sometimes strip away the noise, the distractions, the easy comforts we lean on to avoid the harder truths inside us. It pares life down to its essentials. And when we’re brave enough to face what remains, we can sometimes touch something raw and startlingly authentic. That’s what this week gave me. Not better writing because of pain, but a kind of unflinching honesty I might have otherwise skirted around.

There’s something almost surgical about that kind of clarity. The way grief can slice through the clutter and leave behind only the marrow of what matters. I don’t welcome it, but I recognize it. And sometimes I wonder if the work produced during those days, when I’m scraped bare, carries a different charge. Not a better one, necessarily, but one with voltage, something alive and trembling.

I don’t want to build a life or a body of work that depends on pain. That feels important to say outright. I want to write from joy. I want to write from delight, from curiosity, from wonder, from the absurdity of it all. If I could choose my muse, I’d choose the late afternoon light in Rome or the sound of my nephew laughing in the other room. But we don’t always get to choose. Some weeks, the muse is the ache that won’t leave your chest. So you write with it anyway. You write through it.

What strikes me now is that resilience has a rhythm, just like creativity does. It’s not about triumphantly rising from the ashes every time, but about quietly choosing, again and again, to keep going. To sit down at the desk. To risk the blank page. To forgive yourself on the days when you can’t. There’s something undeniably charismatic about a person who can live with their own contradictions, their own chaos, and still extend warmth and humor to the world. That’s the kind of person I want to be. Not the brilliant, tormented figure at the edge of the abyss, but someone who can laugh, love, and create even with the abyss whispering at his shoulder.

And what a victory that is, being able to create not for survival, not as a scream in the dark, but as a way to stay tethered to life. To make something simply because you can, because your hands are steady today, because you remembered how to begin again. It’s not glamorous. It won’t sell books by the myth. But it’s real. And it’s mine.

Grief may remain a companion for some time yet, but it no longer holds the pen. I do. And in that, there’s both freedom and a kind of quiet triumph. The work continues, and so do I. And spring, no matter how far away it seems, always comes back.