Zarina Docken

Question:
It has been written that good art springs only from bad life, that what makes a great writer is an unhappy childhood, or that excessive drinking (and perhaps other addictions) is "the writer's vice." Having read your short bio online, I'm inclined to believe that you are a healthy, happy individual. What are your thoughts on the notion that writers should have led or continue to live tragic lives in order to create?

Answer:
I’d have to agree with you on the “healthy, happy individual” part.  I don’t even have any interesting vices or eccentricities.  On the whole, I’m a very dull individual who will never have a television miniseries or movie made about her life.  Tortured artists are much more interesting at the box  office, I’ll admit, but the question that always comes to my mind is: “How much more, how much better, would this artist have been if he (or she) wasn’t, say, drinking himself to distraction?”  Imagine if Hemingway’s novels had continued to have the depth and beauty of his early work.  Or the additional paintings Van Gogh might have made without the demons in his head.

I think in most cases depression or “vices” tend to detract from an artist’s potential.  Is there a correlation between sensitivity, imagination, and emotional distress?  It’s possible.  But unless the artist is actively engaging in, as Matt Groening put it, “sitting in my cubbyhole, waiting, waiting” (i.e., deliberate cultivation of depression, bitterness, and “artistic temperament”), I can’t imagine that any tortured human being would want to continue the torture if he or she knew how to stop it or could find the will/way to overcome an addiction.  (Well, unless the artist in question is a teenager.  It’s required that teenagers revel in misery as part of the rite of passage.  I have any number of stories about death, suicide, and general misery that I wrote in my high school days.)

Obviously, I’m prejudiced, but I think what makes great writers is not the torture within their soul, but their ability to see the people, places, and social tensions that surround them. Van Gogh’s paintings are his attempts to show on canvas how sunlight and starlight feel.  A writer tries to put into words how life feels.  And if the writer is too caught up in her own drama to appreciate and discover the drama in a character's life, she will never be able to adequately convey emotion, interaction, and the natural beauty of the surrounding world to her readers.  I have read any number of what I call “pretentious” books that tell me more about the author than the characters in his or her story.  That’s not to say I don’t enjoy these books, just that I don’t think they achieve their full potential.

One of the most profound pieces of advice I’ve received is: “Honesty is never cliche.” It’s an incredibly freeing piece of advice as it doesn’t ask you to follow the hottest trend or to write in a particular style or even to cultivate an unhappy life to aid your inspiration.  Instead it asks you to look inside yourself and find what it is that you have to tell other people.  Each one of us has a unique vision of the world and a large part of what makes art so wonderful is when your unique vision touches someone else’s and you truly understand each other.  But if we are all trying to create art following a particular pattern--be it alcoholism or just writing to the market--we will only have a superficial understanding of the other humans beside us on the path of life.

I’d better stop before I wax philosophical!

The daughter of American missionaries, Karen Brichoux grew up in the Philippines, but now calls the Midwestern United States home.  After receiving a Master’s degree in European history, she began writing fiction full time.  Karen is the author of The Girl She Left Behind, and the previously released Coffee & Kung Fu and Separation Anxiety. She lives with her spouse, three cats, and a large, middle-aged dog who thinks he is a puppy.