Archives
Categories:
- Business announcements
- Best First Line Contest
- Books/Reading
- Contests
- Editing
- New Releases/Excerpts
- Life
- Miscellaneous
- Round Robin
- TV/Movies
- Writing
Recent Comments
- Crystal Dee (Tales of a Sequel Whore )
- Leah Braemel (Tales of a Sequel Whore )
- Devon Ellington (Do you NaNo?)
- Beth Williamson (Devils on Horseback Rides in Again!)
- Jess Dee (The things we shouldn’t love…but we do…)
- Rhian Cahill (Devils on Horseback Rides in Again!)
- Chris Redding (The story behind the story.)
- Karin (Dedications)
- Beth Williamson (Dedications)
- Crystal Dee (Dedications)
Walking the Line Between Creativity and Insanity
“Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy” ~Marshall McLuhan
I came across an article that stated there was a strong correlation between creativity and psychosis. This wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this, but it got me thinking.
Through time, some of the most creative minds were connected to people who have been labeled anywhere from eccentric to flat out crazy. Examples of such people are, Edgar Allen Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Lord Byron, Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Andy Warhol, Rembrandt, and Michael Jackson, to name few. I’m sure I could list more people but I’d be blogging all day.While I don’t completely agree that all people who are creative should be fit for straight jackets, maybe there’s just a little bit of weird in us all. How many of us saw that episode of Oprah where Tom Cruise was jumping on her couch like a lunatic? How at the Grammy’s one year where an artist calling himself Soy Bomb jumped on the stage with Bob Dylan and started dancing like a man on fire? What about when Prince changed his name to a symbol? Kinda nutty right?
And let’s be honest, how many of you have met an author, or an actor, singer, dancer, musician or anyone in a creative field and said: wow, that people is one breakdown away from a psych ward? Or maybe you’re the zany one in your social circles.
Perhaps it’s all part of the package. I’ve been known to have my offbeat moments, like spontaneously breaking out into dance in grocery stores or singing theme songs to old 80’s sitcoms for no reason at all. But you know what? I don’t think crazy is necessarily a bad thing in a lot of cases. Maybe being a little wacky helps the creative process.
Though you try to fight it, perhaps the crazy can’t help but to come out. So I say, unleash it and the possibilities are limitless.
How do you unleash your inner nut?
Eve Vaughn
One Island…One Woman…Two Studs
Stranded~Now Available at Samhain
www.evevaughn.com
Great blog, hmm, I unleash the crazy by writing. :-)
I agree with you Eve and feel very free when letting out the crazy in me all the time. It really keeps everyone on their toes too. LOL Thanks for clarifying things for me.
Hi Eve:
I enjoy your books very much. I watch all the websites that sell your books so that I can purchase them on their first day of release.
I sing, I dance, I joke… I’m the general goof of the office and the most likely to break into a song and use my purse strap as the microphone. LOL
Makes perfect sense to me.
One of the fundamental things that makes an artist an artist (IMHO) is an ability to look at the world as it is and see how it could be, or see something other or deeper or more and then translate that into reality, whether it’s music or visual or text. One the fundamental parts of being crazy is an inability to see or process or deal with reality as it is.
A lack with the first ability (or a lack of ability to turn those “other” visions into something entertaining and/or coherent) doesn’t mean you can’t lead an enjoyable, fulfilling life, and hey, that’s one of the things the artists are here for, to bring that life-other-than-it-is into entertaining reality for those who may not have the artistic streak themselves. A lack with the second… or an overabundance of the first (and inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality) well… therein lies some of the crazy.
I’m a few fries short of a happy meal and proud of it. My characters talk to me, I don’t talk back, but I hear them, so yeah…I’m days away from jumping on a couch myself.
Lena
Fantastic post Eve! I totally agree. Rod Sterling, the writer of the original Twilight Zone commented once that night terrors (PTSD) from World War II drove him to write. His passion gave him a focus, but the nightmares wouldn’t leave until he battled his demons on paper.
It is difficult for an author to find that delicate balance.
How much of yourself do you put out there? And we have to be a little odd, don’t we? Sit in front of pen and paper or computer screen for days on end and then reconnect with the world? It leaves the author a bit “out of touch.”
Love your books, hon. You know I’m a long time fan!
LOL!! I totally agree, and I do the same thing. My family thinks I’m nuts. But I think that is my creative side coming out. And we should listen always to that side of ourselves. Otherwise we’d end up stiffling a very important part of our beings.
LOL Great blog topic.
I’ve always been a bit different, not quite walking to the same drum as the folks around me. But that’s okay. It’s because we see the world in a slightly different manner that helps us be creative.
Plus, the voices in my head need a way to come out that won’t land me in a hospital. LOL
Oh yeah, I’m definitely one of the weird ones! :)
I get lost in my head for hours and then find it hard and almost painful at times to come back to reality.
I’m one of those really quiet people who sit in the corner watching and listening. Yes, my characters talk to me, and sometimes while I’m typing they do things that surprise me. I’ll be looking at my screen and what I just typed thinking, “I didn’t know he was going to do that!” Sounds a bit crazy even to me. :)
Though the idea that creative people are a little on the crazy side didn’t really occur to me until I was in college and we were reading some bios of famous authors and such. I remember that it dawned on me that they all had issues of some type.
It never occured to me that what I was doing/thinking was weird because I’ve always been like that, so it was normal for me.
Perhaps crazy is a matter of perspective?
I’ve always wondered, if Prozac had existed back in, say, Poe’s or Hemingway’s time, would we have had their magnificent works to enjoy now?
Probably not!
Several years ago I tried an antidepressant. It made life pleasant for everyone around me, but took away my desire to write. When I realized I just didn’t care if I ever wrote another word, I quit taking it.
Learning to deal with the weirdness is preferable to a life of vanilla. Which, by the way, is my least favorite flavor. :)
I know all about crazy, since I live with a borderline genius who has bouts of paranoia. He’s a conspiracy theorist in the worst way! LOL
I think artistic people tend to be a bit off, just the nature of the beast, I guess. It certainly makes for innovative/creative thinking which has never really been a bad thing…