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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As a really good writer, painter, actor, architect, or composer you have the ability to generate the best solutions to creative problems. The solutions are much better than the solutions less capable creatives settle on. Your aesthetic judgment is better than theirs. You perceive features of the problems facing you and the solutions to them that lesser creatives don’t notice and can’t think of.
He had a staggering knowledge of American songs. I knew Marvin and would do exhaustive research trying to stump him with the least known and most esoteric songs my research could find, asking him “Who wrote…?” and “Who wrote…?” However obscure the song and no matter how confidently I thought, “He will never know this one,” he always knew.
Unlike ordinary writers who might not be aware that their plots are not believable, a really good writer would be aware if theirs were not. Yet, in spite of being vividly aware and quite objective and accurate about their own work, expert artists and writers have the weakness of often being wrong in their predictions about the performance of novices they have been asked to evaluate. It is as though they are unable to recognize talent while it is still in a formative state. In fact, the greater their expertise, the more likely they are to be wrong in predicting the performance of novices.
including the senior editor whose judgment was “always right” rejected it as impossible to understand. Only Charles Monteith, who had never edited a book before, argued angrily on behalf of the book he had fallen in love with despite its obvious flaws. Unlike the experts, he saw that good editing could remedy its weaknesses. Lord of the Flies, edited by Monteith, became an international best seller.
Really good creatives are able to pull out of their minds–with ease–the insights they need. They are so able and accustomed to using the substantial skills they have developed, that they do so automatically, “without thought” as a Zen master would say. To them writing or painting is easy. Yet, at the same time, they may be victims of inflexibility in the face of new circumstances. At times they have trouble adjusting to situations confronting them.
Really good creatives spend considerable time analyzing the problems facing them while less accomplished creatives spend less time and are not as patient as the exceptional creatives. 
Genius in the arts or in any other pursuit is almost always specific to one art, one domain. Often it is assumed without too much thought that a person with a high level of skill in one area will almost automatically be skilled in another area or many other areas. That’s called “the halo effect.” Yet while there are exceptions, the halo effect is generally invalid. High-performing creators do not excel in areas where they have no expertise. But in a single domain they are on their home turf, and their work is really good.
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