Novelist Notions: Writing, Creativity, and Personal Growth

Everybody tells you if you want to be a writer, you have to write every day. I used to think that it was not only preposterous, but impossible. No one can write every single day, I said, and those who do are probably nuts. Hindsight tells me that’s why I was never successful. It took listening to many talks from my favorite writer—and a man I mention a lot here—Stephen King to give me the insight I needed to put myself on the path to the career I wanted. I watched and listened to many conversations King has had with many people, and they all had one talking point in common: “In order to be a writer, you have to read a lot, and you have to write a lot.” It occurred to me then that I was not nuts. The urge to write constantly was not a sign of mental illness, but rather a sign that writing was something I was supposed to do. I always read. I’ve been reading since I learned how. My parents didn’t know what to do when I was in school. They wanted me to go to bed at night so I could g...

August 2020, If not for Covid, this would have been a normal family vacation. Family, fun, and fishing usually defined these weeks on the lake that my family took every year. This year though, my mind was heavy first with dread, then with heartbreak. The latter would stretch me to the brink until I could no longer maintain my usual stoicism. Little did I know at the time that the upcoming grief would shape my path as a writer and make me a better man. I arrived on Grindstone Lake the first weekend in August. My family and I were set to spend a week on the lake, as was tradition in our family since I can remember now. I chose not to tell my family that my best friend Steve, whom my family knew well both from my friendship with his brother and the two of us attending karaoke events every Thursday night until our jobs would no longer allow, was in the hospital fighting for his life. It didn’t seem necessary. After all, he’d been getting better. But on that Monday in August 2020, everythin...

  Dismantling the Dangerous Romance of Creative Suffering There's a scene that plays out in countless movies, books, and cultural narratives: the brilliant artist, hunched over their work in a dimly lit garret, fueled by anguish, addiction, or mental illness, creating masterpieces from the depths of their suffering. We've romanticized this image so thoroughly that many of us—myself included at various points—have unconsciously bought into the idea that great art requires great suffering, that creativity and mental health are incompatible. I used to think my midnight writing sessions, born from insomnia and anxiety, were somehow more "authentic" because they emerged from struggle. There was a part of me that worried that if I got too mentally healthy, too stable, too content, I might lose whatever creative spark I possessed. It's a seductive narrative: the idea that our pain serves a higher purpose, that our struggles are the price we pay for artistic vision. But t...