WRITING IN SPITE OF YOURSELF

I now understand that sometimes we have talents in precisely the areas that are most challenging to us. Strikes me that this is far more normal than being a total natural or a supernatural savant.

If you feel like you do your art in spite of yourself, you ain’t alone, welcome to the club.

“A real writer (or artist or entrepreneur) has something to give. She has lived enough and suffered enough and thought deeply enough about her experience to be able to process it into something that is of value to others, even if only as entertainment.”

Many people who are talented in their various fields have access to insight they can’t share with others. They simply see something we can’t. They try to describe it—picture any Paris Review interview—and often hearing them talk about their process is interesting and informative. But they’re unable to describe the core thing—what gives them the sto... See more

I believe that our creativity grows like sidewalk weeds out of the cracks between our pathologies—not from the pathologies themselves. But so many people think it’s the other way around. For this reason, you will often meet artists who deliberately cling to their suffering, their addictions, their fears, their demons. They worry that if they ever l

... See more