Do you have to be fucked in the head to be a good writer?

>>8795417
no, but go ahead and define 'fucked in the head'

>>8795426
Mental illness. It seems like every great writer has/had either depression, schizophrenia, bipolar, borderline, etc.

>>8795417
>Do you have to be fucked in the head to be a good writer?
No. Probably so in order to be an INTERESTING writer

>>8795464
this

>>8795437
Everyone gets depressed, I'm not sure that every writer who was depressed had clinical depression.

Who are some good schizo authors?

>>8795437
>all good writers were like, damaged, man, like me... like mental illness is like totally what makes people creative
I don't know why both self-pitying /r9k/ types and normalshits like to jack off to the romantic ideal of the tortured, mentally ill artist. Not only is it not true save for a few well-known exceptions, it's an obnoxiously cliche and sentimental view.

>>8795475
Kerouac is my personal favorite

>>8795475
Artaud was schizophrenic

>>8795487
>damaged, man, like me
Actually it's the opposite. Your assumptions make you look like an asshole. I know I'm completely normal hence I don't think my art will ever have the same appeal as someone who's off their rocker. I'm just another face in the crowd.

It may be cliche, but like it or not, people eat up the art of "tortured souls".

>>8795496
Nah. Just because the public likes to romanticize insane people doesn't mean that mental illness has anything to do with creativity. Great artists are necessarily intelligent and mentally lucid, and no artist is better off insane than sane.

>you don't have to be crazy to work here but it helps!

Great writers are usually intelligent and eccentric, not normal, but not "mentally ill" in the psychiatric and popular sense. Most "mentally ill" people are too self-pitying and passive, and art is active and actualizing. The temperament that makes a great artist is similar to that which makes a great political or businessman, but applied inward. If you don't have that, you're just another sad sack with big dreams but the inability to accomplish them.

>>8795507
Not him but I have to disagree.

There are certain points of view and feelings that not just anyone can experience and/or relate to.

Let's take a basic example: Kurt Cobain and bipolar disorder.

Yeah, Cobain's put on an ivory pedestal but regardless of what you think of his music, his bipolar disorder came out clearly in his lyrics (and to an extent, his guitar playing). I highly doubt John Smith from the suburbs can craft art like Cobain could because he just didn't think the way Cobain did.

Is Nirvana overrated because dying young is romanticized? Sure. But is their art nothing special? I'd argue far from it.

>>8795537
That's true, I guess. You could also say that Cobain's bipolar disorder and heroin use hurt his music, because he wasn't even lucid very often and never had the motivation to, say, become a better guitar player. Intellectually, he was stunted and edgy, judging by his notebooks.

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>>8795417
...no?

What kind of retard underage logic is this? Is this /mu/ naivete speaking again?

>>8795558
I suppose you could argue both ways but we'll never really know. His heroin use definitely stunted his work, though. I'm not a big believer in the DUDE DRUGS = CREATIVITY LMAO mentality.

>Intellectually, he was stunted and edgy, judging by his notebooks.
Yeah, he definitely was. I don't think he was stupid by any means but you can clearly see that he went out of his way to look smarter than he actually was with topics like politics, religion, social justice, etc. However, given that most of his audience consisted of angsty teenagers and college kids, it did him well. That's a whole other can of worms, though.