"Make It Uglier. Make It Hurt. Make It Real": Narrative Construction of the Creative Writer's Identity

Abstract

What makes a creative writer choose-and cling to-a vocation that is psychologically demanding, physically isolating, fraught with rejection and disappointment, and rarely rewarded with money or fame? An investigation into the experience of writer's block and flow in creative writers led to several insights on such matters. Four creative writers, aged 19 through 48 and representing all genres and varied levels of renown, were individually interviewed in 4 taped sessions of 60 to 90 min each. Transcripts of the 16 interviews were analyzed for common themes and topics. An interpretation of the writers' life stories as constructive narratives of identity emerged: Each experienced social isolation from peers during childhood and adolescence and had a sense of being odd. As outsiders, they developed an observer's eye, which became part of their personality. They all managed to elevate oddity to a virtue by their middle school years. Being odd themselves, they also became fascinated with oddity in the outside world, creating a libido for the bizarre that was integrated into their identities and their writing. For these writers, their vocation is an enactment of their self-constructed identity, and they speak of it in metaphors of religion, love, addiction, and ego idealism.