The Writer’s and Artist’s Sheer Voltage
Psychologists classify people in categories according to their personality traits. Yet they cannot measure intensity and sheer energy of a person’s life force. There are some people who have a hundred times more intensity than others. Artists and writers have an abundance of intensity. The energy pouring out of Vincent van Gogh would bowl you over. Writer Thomas Wolfe wrote in a “wild ecstasy” at top speed, never hesitating for a word, as though he were taking dictation. He wrote all night, at times churning out on large oversized sheets of newsprint thousands of hand-written words before dawn, leaving behind at his death at age 37 a million words to be made into books posthumously. Goethe called these super-charged creatures “demoniacs,” people with a super-abundance of vitality, “something that escapes analysis, reason, comprehension.” Goethe was aware of this power in himself.
A high level of energy is one characteristic of many artists and writers. Another characteristic is this: Artists and writers are often so highly focused and absorbed in solving artistic problems that they have no interest in anything that competes with attention to their work, such as concern for social relations, status, prestige, material objects, and money.
Most artists and writers spend an inordinate number of hours alone, and enjoy that very much, believing they are in ideal company alone in a studio or work room. That need for autonomy and social isolation is one of the reasons why many artists and writers were attracted to their art in the first place. A detached attitude in interpersonal relations–the strong desire to do what you have in mind to do without restraint or control from any other person–is a strong quality of yours if you are like most great artists. And not much desire to be included in a group unless that group stimulates your creativity.
The Need Theory of motivation states that the need for other people is one of the most powerful forces, yet many people pursuing an art have not a single close friend. Asked why, they answer that they don’t want or need friends. They aspire to be non-conforming in thinking, and independent in judgment, to shut out irrelevant events and people, to cut off what is unnecessary to their creative life. Short story master and innovative playwright Anton Chekhov was the most popular writer in Russia, beloved by a vast public, and with many acquaintance in literature, but without one person he could call a valued friend.
It was said of Martha Graham, who revolutionized the art of modern dance, “Martha felt that she must cut from her life all deep emotional involvements, all attachments, all comforts, even moments of leisure, and beyond that love involving family and children. She gave everything to her work, withheld nothing.” Picasso could be affable and gracious when he wanted, but tended not to get deeply involved with anyone, and was willing to sacrifice any person who interfered with his work. Toni Morrison said, “I don’t go to parties. All I do is write.”
Competence and elegance, aesthetics and the desire to create something novel and meaningful are at the heart of the artist’s and writer’s system of values. They are often indifferent to the standard conventions and social niceties. Some, like writer Raymond Chandler, are socially withdrawn. As a screen writer Chandler abhorred the need to associate with other writers and collaborate with movie directors, and they, in turn, were none too happy working with such an unpleasant person.
Quotes
Nobel Laurette Saul Bellow was married five times. He said, “I have always put the requirements of what I was writing first–before jobs, before children, before any material or practical interest, and if I discover that anything interferes with what I’m doing, I chuck it. Perhaps this is foolish, but it has always been the case with me.”
“The biographies of great artists make it abundantly clear that the creative urge is often so impervious that it battens on their humanity and yokes everything to the service of their work, even at the cost of health and ordinary human happiness.” (Carl Gustav Jung)
“The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for a living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.” (George Bernard Shaw.)
“I wish I could work straight through and wouldn’t have to stop for any reason–not for meals, sleep, rest, entertainment, shopping, socializing, conversation, repairmen, UPS deliveries, playing with the kids, sex.” (A writer friend)
© 2024 David J. Rogers
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I was excited waking up at 3:00 A.M. yesterday, and I was not thinking of going back to sleep. I wanted to finish some poems where I had left off the night before. I thought, “Let my wife–a calmer, less excitable person–sleep; I 
Intense writers and artists do everything intensely–experiencing, feeling, thinking, and imagining. They are significantly different human beings from other writers and artists (and agents and family members and co-workers) who are not intense. They feel their emotions strongly. They soar high with elevated emotions, and they plunge into dark 
Intensity is a quality found in many creative people that facilitates artistic pursuits. Abbe Dimnet said that the creator’s intensity will be reflected in the quality of the work: “The experience of most artists is that the quality of their production is in keeping with the intensity of their wish.” Henry James wrote: “It is art that makes life, makes intensity, makes importance.” Horace said, “Painters and poets alike have always had license to dare anything.” It is their intensity that gives them strength. Keats said, “The excellency of every art is its intensity “ A problem every writer and artist faces is maintaining in every phase of their story or painting the intensity that keeps it going and energizes the creator’s every gesture and the work’s every detail. They must be able to generate and sustain intensity as they work.
Who could be more intense than poet Walt Whitman who expressed a wish to have “one hour of madness and joy,” “to feed the remainder of life with one hour of fullness and freedom,” “To have the feeling today or any day I am sufficient as I am.” Who more intense than novelists Charles Dickens with his phenomenal storehouse of drive that enabled him to work on a multiplicity of books, speeches, plays, travels, and social projects at the same time without ever tiring?
Whether you find creative people in remote little mountain kingdoms accessible only by mule or in big, modern, cosmopolitan cities, you will discover that they are surprisingly alike. The many traits they share are not all favorable; some are obstacles. Yet those traits–the worst and the best together–prepare creative people for fascinating lives other people look at with admiration and envy.
May be “overlooked” as school children. Their talents unrecognized, they may have undistinguished elementary and high school careers, only to be recognized for their significant achievements later in life to the surprise of everyone.
Sadly, at times may be too emotionally ill to work, particularly poets and writers who may be victims of the high and inexplicable incidence of debilitating 
Have an insatiable need to 
“Know who they are.” Are marked by a clear, unambiguous sense of identity, as “I am an historical novelist specializing in women’s roles in England during the Victorian era.”
Can be playful, child-like, humorous, silly, fun to be with, and seem younger than their age.
Benefit from a rare a
For survival must become skilled at overcoming obstacles, of which there are many in the arts.
painter. The storm buffeting the windows and pelting them with hail and snow made impossible even the thought of digging cars out and driving home. But everyone was in a good mood, and the house was warm. We were happy being together again after being separated so long by COVID.
accomplished people in the arts have wondered what they have that makes their creative work possible. The main quality anyone must possess if they are trying to be successful in anything, not just the arts, but certainly the arts, I feel, is energy. 
“Painters, writers, actors, and dancers enter the world talented. From the beginning of their lives they can draw better than other children or write more interesting compositions, act out scenes more skillfully, dance more gracefully. Just look at the lovely paintings some little children can paint and the poems they can write. Some children are too young to have learned to paint, yet they paint wonderfully and have technique. No one has taught them. They can paint superbly before being taught. When they are being taught they absorb information so quickly, it’s astonishing. That’s the definition of talent.
“I think that 
The storm still didn’t look so good, so they stayed the night. In the morning Paul insisted on making breakfast. I made coffee. We vowed to get together again soon. Then in early afternoon a bright sun came out, the winds died, and they left for home where work and many challenges were waiting.
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