@obsidian_cicatrix: Thank goodness I'm not the only one who went through that. I thought I'd never meet another who knows what it's like!
I was depressed for a long time from the end of Highschool to about my 3rd year of College. I found that during the time I wrote some of the darkest parts of my novel with ease. The fluffy stuff I had issues with for obvious reasons. So in my opinion Creativity of a certain type can be made if your depressed
@Dresden260 I think it really depends... I've been battling this for 32 years. It doesn't get easier with practice, believe me.
@HarleyQ. I've met a few, so I know it's not just me. That makes me feel a little better about it. So, I can relate.
Reading the discussion, I wonder if I was a little too broad in my definition of depression. I categorized all depression the same when it really has numerous, intricate causes. It seems like most of the people who've responded here have memories of producing good work while depressed, while others were completely blocked. I wonder what the reason for the difference is.
@Michael Timothy Good question. I'm musing on it, but my brain is lagging a bit today. It may take a while to formulate an answer. For people who are going through a rough patch, I don't think expression is so much an issue. I'm never going to be cured of my bi polar. I can only do my best to try and keep it under control and, as I age, it seems to be getting more difficult. I was warned this might happen.
Sorry to hear people are suffering with depression. I have suffered on and off with depression since I as about 15. Some days u just go into the rabbit hole and it feels you're not going to come back out. I find if I keep busy, mind and body and avoid alcohol and drugs my mood is fine...as long as I don't get into big flaming arguments with family, at work etc....(sorry, prob goin off the subject here)...
@Darrell Standing I've taken up residence in said rabbit hole on many's an occasion. Avoiding unecessary stress is a big one with me too. Although what I call stress and what others do, can be two different things. I must appear very irrational at times.
Not meant as an insult, but given that you put this forth as advice, and given that any advice is only as good as the demonstrated result of taking it, I have to ask if that approach has yielded contracts with a publisher. “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” ~ Mark Twain There's an old joke, that some people get a year's worth of experience and others, a days worth, 365 times. As one who falls into the latter category I find that hedging my bets by finding out what works for successful people allows me to fake that year's worth of experience.
My father suffers very greatly from bipolar disorder. He's on the upper end of his mid-50s. I watched it affect him badly throughout my teenage years. He'd make decisions and then change his mind, then change his mind again, over and over, time and time again. I also have two uncles on my mother's side affected by it but luckily I've avoided the worst of it and only had to cope with my own depression. What I'm saying is, I don't get it, but I've seen the sort of thing you probably go through.
I can understand formal education isn't for everyone, but I'm confused why someone would be "against" it.
OK, now we are in your area of expertise and I recently looked into this and did not find the literature supported this conclusion. Are there specific mood disorders you are referring to as opposed to mental illness in general?
Actually, he had a point that most people miss. When we know the chest is his, and by context we know which one he opened, saying "his" chest is in the POV of the narrator, because to the character it's "the" chest. In practice, I find that a fair number of "he" and "his" can be reworded or eliminated to place the reader more tightly into the protagonist's POV. As to the question of that $400 writing course, for anyone, I'd first read either Dwight Swain's, Techniques of the Selling Writer ($16 on Kindle), Jack Bickham's, Scene and Structure (free at the local library), or Deb Dixon's, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict ($1995 at: http://www.gryphonbooksforwriters.com/home/gmc.htm). You'll need six months or more to fully integrate what they give you into your writing, and at the end of that time won't need that expensive course because you just learned from a more skilled teacher than you get via an online course that will be teaching you the same things for a lot more money.
@Michael Timothy It is very often genetic. It's the biggest part of the problem I face as a writer. I shred my work apart, very often. Or, I'll head off on a wild goose chase. Can be hard to keep characterisation too. I was writing during the week, and my mood flipped. (I'm a rapid cycler.) My MC started to behave in a manner that was completely unlike him, for no other reason than my perspective had changed. Back to the drawing board. I would do it now, but I know my head isn't in the right place yet. And so, here I sit, writing this reply back to you, just so I keep busy. I often say that writing something is better than writing nothing at all.
Because I don't want to get into another tiff over supportable and unsupportable claims at the moment, if anyone is interested in the evidence side of this belief in the connection between any mental illness and creativity, here is a link to my post from the other thread, followed by contradictory evidence and my reply to that: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/writing-and-mental-illness.60802/#post-1013127 https://www.writingforums.org/threads/writing-and-mental-illness.60802/#post-1016771 https://www.writingforums.org/threads/writing-and-mental-illness.60802/#post-1016774 I'm open to evidence supporting the claim, it makes no sense to me to lump all mental disorders together and it may very well be there are specific illnesses that are the exception. But for me, when I hear this kind of claim, the first thing I think of is, look into it. It's so easy to believe and pass around these stereotypes: mental illness connected to genius, mental illness and creativity, we all know about Poe and Van Gogh. Such observations should lead to forming hypotheses, but until one tests those hypotheses, all you have are selected, uncontrolled anecdotes and observations that may or may not represent a larger population. Just because one mentally ill person (or depressed person, or people within a broader category of mood disorders) is a famous creative person does not mean there is an association between the two. Which should not be confused with thinking a person with a mood disorder cannot also be creative. It's just that you are likely to find similar proportions of creative people within a population of people with mental illness, including mood disorders as you would within a population of people without those conditions. I'm not saying there isn't. When I looked into it I didn't find the evidence supported the mythical stereotypes of creativity and mental illness, but if someone were to post some convincing evidence here, I'd be happy to learn something new. This is something I investigated, not something I've gained special expertise in. But if we are going to discuss this sort of thing, shouldn't we care about the facts? Or do they not matter? If you don't want to sort through all that, here is the main source I cited: Creativity and Mental Illness: Is There a Link? On a side note, depression runs deep in my family and I've been successfully treated for it for the last 20 years. Unfortunately for many of my close relatives, they pretty much self medicated with alcohol and for three of them it resulted in suicide (grandfather, great-grandfather and great-uncle). We know so much more about the brain now, and about the mechanics of mood and how to intervene when those mechanics aren't healthy. Hopefully in the near future, we'll know even more.
I think we should also be making a distinction between clinical depression (really bad, such as my mother had), and just simple 'down' periods. I would never say I've suffered from depression, but my return to writing (which came in a huge, gigantic vomit of a chapter or more a day) coincided with my increasing unhappiness with where my marriage was. Unhappy in my role as roommate vs spouse, I think this was a catalyst that sent me looking for something I could be successful at, as well as placing my mind in a fantasy world that I had complete control over. Stir in a little highly desirable female protagonist, and any amateur psychologist could have figured out what I was up to. Having implemented a plan to correct the path of my marriage, the burning desire to write has waned enough that I don't feel the compelling urge to rush home from work and hit the keys. But, once I do start writing it still flows easily (which I believe has more to do with inborn talent than my mental state). I was a bit of a misfit in my teen years (but then, who wasn't?) but I know that is when I really worked most on my writing. Once I got into adulthood, I didn't write much. However, I did write quasi-diary papers (today we would call them 'blogs') hashing out my displeasure and confusion about how things in life were going. I have kept these and re-read them every few years, and they are very enlightening. But when I wrote them, the gush of words provided much needed mental release. That is the only purpose they served. Turning that need to write towards an actual story may be equally therapeutic.
@GingerCoffee: I have no knowledge or expertise in the actual study of the link between creativity and mental illness, so I'll stay out of that discussion, interesting as it may be. Your last comment struck a chord with me. For a while now, I haven't been much of a believer in mood-altering drugs, but that's only for myself personally. They aren't the way for me to handle it. Although I'm tempted to believe there's something afoot with the pharmaceutical industry, when I see people suffer as they do I can't imagine it's just something they've concocted in their minds. @ddavidv: I was very aware of mental illness growing up because of my family members who suffered from it (though I didn't know about my father's case until I was 15), so it could be that I termed something depression that most people wouldn't consider depression at all. I have made efforts to stop calling my down periods depression, but I was still interested in the thoughts of others. Thanks for sharing yours. I've always written therapeutically, as well. I have an overactive imagination, or rather a love of using my imagination, and if I don't use it often enough, I get stressed, anxious, and yes, down. Other things do this to me, too, although in most things I am a roll-with-the-punches sort.
Buyer beware is a reasonable admonition for this area of drug treatment. I didn't find much benefit from Prozac and wonder about drugs when they seem to have gone the 'fad' route. But people misunderstand the problems with the pharmaceutical industry. For example, cancer chemotherapy rarely comes under social scrutiny the same way vaccines do. On the other hand, there is clear evidence some particularly widespread drug prescribing needs a much closer look. You have to take these things on a case by case basis rather than lumping everything into the Big Pharma conspiracy pigeon hole. Drugs for depression are not as well sorted out as say, antibiotics where we can grow the pathogen and test susceptibility. I had a crisis event onset for my depression and at first I was prescribed trazadone. I got some needed sleep but it was not the drug for me. After a second opinion I changed to buproprion and despite the fact most people are given 6 months on the drug and it's stopped, I've just stayed on it. Side effects are minimal and I've not had any problems with long term use. Sometimes I've had breakthrough symptoms and I've tried various other drugs for them but I usually end up just waiting the exacerbation out without extra medication. I'd probably be an alcoholic like the other members of my family if I hadn't gotten treatment. Bottom line, case by case basis when it comes to treatment for depression. There are multiple causes and one drug doesn't fit all causes, nor are drug treatments right for everyone.
I created a thread about this long ago, but I'm not in the mood to dig it up right now. Basically the crux is, formal education makes you sound exactly that: formal. Many schooled writers I've seen, especially younger ones (high school & jr. college) sound more like they're writing a research paper than a work of fiction. I firmly believe you need only basic training in the English language and it's use. Beyond that, read all you can and work on developing your personal voice. Please refer to my signature...
It's very interesting to hear your story. Even if this thread didn't end up like I thought it would, I've certainly learned something about depression itself, and that only adds to its influence on creativity. Writers seem to find the two like counterweights, and it's interesting that the study does indicate a higher incidence of depression in writers.
I'm not sure if there's a direct relationship between creativity and mental illnesses; it may seem that way because we hear about authors/artists who had some illness or it could be there actually is a correlation of some sort. I don't think it really matters because people don't have a choice in the matter anyway. As to why some people are more creative during episodes and others aren't, I'd say it probably has to do with what stage one is in. With my depression, there were many days when I was nearly obsessed with writing - it was the world I could live in. But when the episodes got deeper, I didn't care if I even read a book, let alone worked on one. Hell, I didn't care if I got out of bed...
Also: There appears to be some confusion between clinical depression, and just feeling a little down sometimes. Clinical depression is thought to be caused by less sensitive nerve receptors. A person with clinical depression literally cannot feel as well as a normal person. No amount of positive thinking is going to change that. Here is a fantastic explanation.
