I heard someone say that recently and started knocking it around in my head (not that I think genius lives in my head, mind you). I started thinking about guys like Mozart, Picasso, Da Vinci, wondering how much of their genius was a result of pain. Since I've never read a biography of any of them, I don't know.
But I did start to examine the pain of one of my current story characters. This guy is a professional criminal, a perfectionist who has made a wreck of his personal life in several ways, but only one that directly impacts the story. I spent about an hour this morning trying to get inside this guy's head, specifically inside his pain. It wasn't easy. It wasn't pretty. But I found out things about my character I didn't know before. Now as I watch him move through the story, I know more about what he's thinking, more about what drives him, what terrifies him.
Is some of his pain some of my own pain? Yes. Am I writing about myself? In a way. I think we all do, whether something painful actually happened to us or whether we lived that pain vicariously or dreamed it. There's something pure and honest in pain and while it can bring up some nasty memories, it also has the potential to bring out lots of good.
But genius?
We'll see. Right now I'll just settle for a good story.
1 comment:
I rented my head to Genius once. God, what a mess. He and Pain would sit up all hours and drink and sing. They put holes in the wall and ruined the carpets. I'll never know what that orange stuff was they left in the bottom of the refrigerator. I finally had to tell Genius to hit the road. I think Pain is lonely, but Fred goes and talks to him sometimes.
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