Can writers be “tortured artists”? Yes. Just ask me.

It’s funny. When I first started writing when I was in my early teens, I didn’t think of myself as an artist. I had this image in my head of a frustrated painter furiously working his canvass. Even though years later I learned that painters weren’t the only people who could be classified as artists – and that writers, too, were considered as such, I still never considered myself one.

It’s only been in the last few years of my creative writing ventures that I’ve felt like I identified with “being an artist” – specifically, the infamous “tortured artist.” Now, let me make it clear that I do not consider myself to be especially gifted or “deep” when it comes to creative writing. I have never taken any formal classes nor had any other type of formal training, did not major in English in college, any of that stuff. I just know that I love writing – especially “old school” writing with a good old pen and notebook, and a few cushy, colored pillows piled around you while you work. Oh, and don’t forget the lemonade or iced tea nearby. Window open. Breeze blowing in.

Yes.

Anyway, how do I, as a writer “artist” who is not particularly gifted in that arena, identify with the “tortured artist”? I wrote (“micro-blogged”!)about it earlier today and tonight on Twitter:

Read a mind blowing quote from one of my book inspirations. Wish I could share it but then I’d have to reveal who it is. #CrypticTweets

I really hate to sound like such a sap, but that quote floored me – I literally gasped. Heart rate accelerated. Knees weakened. #moved

This sounds crazy, but I sort of know what they mean by “tortured artists’ whenever my creative writing spurts hit. : ) #craft

Some creative writing ideas just grab you in the gut and consume you. #craft

Any of you out there reading this who write, or paint, or sing, or act, sculpt, entertain, dance etc … is this not the absolute truth? In the last month or so I’ve picked up a notebook and pen and started writing my a** off. I’m too painfully shy to tell you what it’s about, and who/what my inspirations have been, but it’s just like an inferno that envelops you and you can’t shake it. In a good way.

I’m up at 3 in the morning sometimes putting pen to paper. It’s crazy.

But I love it. I’m not one of those depressed artist types who is unhappy about everything. To the contrary, I can’t wait to get all my ideas on paper and am excited as heck most of the time to just be in the frame of mind to write, and to have ideas with which to play off of.

So maybe I’m not so much “tortured” as I am an “antsy artist” – hmm?

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