Hurting yourself for that perfect scene . . .

PGK · Jan 6, 2010

Is it just me? Am I dumb for doing it? But . . .
I write horror and I've found certain "tricks" that seem to help me set the mood better for certain scenes. Sometimes I use music, sometimes I turn off all the lights in my basement office and try to focus on all my worst fears, and then sometimes . . . I take it a step further.
You see I am a type 1 Diabetic. This means that I have access to two very powerful physical conditions that can severely alter my state of mind. Low blood sugar is one and high blood sugar is the other.
I won't give you a medical run-through of all the symptoms but I'll explain them in terms that are pertinent to the discussion at hand.
Low Blood Sugar, amongst other things, gives me a severe case of anxiety and fear of imminent danger (probably because I actually am in imminent danger of going into diabetic coma and never waking up from it).
High Blood sugar makes me feel like a miserable wretch living in a dystopia created just to torture me.
Those are the best and briefest explanations I can come up with right now.
Low BS (blood sugar) poses an imminent danger to my life, while high BS poses a latent threat as it leads to virtually all Diabetic complications.
Don't get me wrong, I don't take it to extremes, but sometimes I do it nonetheless and my scenes becomes immensely more powerful for it. Granted the language needs heavy revisions after the fact because my ability to concentrate under those circumstances is near non-existent, but the emotion and passion in the writing is on hyper-drive.
Am I alone in my careless stupidity and recklessness for the sake of the craft?

virtue_summer · Jan 6, 2010

Honestly? I think you should depend on your memory and your imagination to write. You already know how pain feels. You don't have to hurt yourself to find out. Doing so is unnecessary and dangerous.

PGK · Jan 6, 2010

You'd be amazed at the difference between remembering the pain and experiencing it in the moment. Though I completely understand and agree with your comment.

kuwisdelu · Jan 6, 2010

Are you dumb for doing it? Yes.

Am I dumb for also doing it? Also yes.

Wavy_Blue · Jan 6, 2010

No. Never.

Writing a good story is never worth the sacrifice of personal well-being. No matter how good it is.

JackinElgin · Jan 6, 2010

By this logic if you were to write a scene about being Drunk or High you would actually have to be Drunk or High.

Worse yet to write a scene about a guy being shot you would actually have to be shot and suffering through that while you wrote it.

If you were going to write about a scene with a car accident would you have to wreck a car and then crawl away from the wreckage with a laptop to write it while it was "still fresh."

OR you could just research what these thing are like and not risk serious injury or death (or in your case blindness, the loss of a foot, or a coma)

Thats what I would do... but hey personel well being is a priority...

ChaosTitan · Jan 6, 2010

Wavy_Blue said:
No. Never.

Writing a good story is never worth the sacrifice of personal well-being. No matter how good it is.

This.

Risking your health and safety for the sake of a story is not worth it.

Canotila · Jan 6, 2010

Once I needed 9 stitches, and had the ER doc stitch it up without a local anesthetic. At first mainly because I was broke with no insurance...but then my warped side was like, "hey! this will be good for writing something."

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be either.

Matera the Mad · Jan 6, 2010

Well...my characters go through a lot, but my imagination covers it all pretty well with a little help from memory. A short walk outside in winter does the rest.

I do a lot of crazy things that don't hurt.

kaitie · Jan 6, 2010

Wavy_Blue said:
No. Never.

Writing a good story is never worth the sacrifice of personal well-being. No matter how good it is.

Ditto. That's what your imagination is for. No writing, I don't care if it wins a Nobel prize, is worth putting yourself in danger or harming yourself.

Shadow_Ferret · Jan 6, 2010

Weird. Second newbie advocating self-inflicted pain. The other said they put their writing before their friends, family, and their own health.

Sorry, but suffering for your art is a cliche.

Use your imagination and don't risk your health.

Rushie · Jan 6, 2010

Canotila said:
Once I needed 9 stitches, and had the ER doc stitch it up without a local anesthetic. At first mainly because I was broke with no insurance...but then my warped side was like, "hey! this will be good for writing something."

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be either.

Nothing wrong with this at all. But diddling around with your blood sugar is a terrible, terrible idea. You're not just risking death, you're risking blindness and amputation.

kuwisdelu · Jan 6, 2010

Without condemning or condoning, whatever works, works.

I won't live forever. My writing could.

kaitie · Jan 6, 2010

I've never been one to buy into the immortality through writing clause. Sure, you might be the next Shakespeare and have your work read even in hundreds or thousands of years from now, but a million? Two million? How about five thousand? (At which point they would doubtless be having to translate the darn things anyway because of language evolution). That's of course requiring we don't destroy the earth to the point of societal collapse and end up in another dark age in the next hundred years, of course.

I'm just saying forever is a long time, and not even writing lives forever.

Woolly · Jan 6, 2010

Maybe I'm overstepping here, but my dad's a diabetic and even his less-than-careful days give our family reason to worry. Think of your loved ones.

evol_reed · Jan 6, 2010

I use my past experiences with pain to inform painful things that happen to my characters. I find I remember pain quite well. That being said, it would never occur to me to cause myself pain for the sake of my writing. I'm not judging anyone who does, just saying it's not part of my personal process.

Cyia · Jan 6, 2010

You don't inflict real pain in the name of fiction.

You don't inflict new pain in the name of non-fiction about old pain.

Stop it.

Toothpaste · Jan 6, 2010

And that's the key, thank you Woolly.

Yes whatever works works I guess. But when you step so far as to endanger yourself just for the sake of your art, I consider it an extremely selfish act. There are people who care about you, who's lives would be devestated if something were to happen to happen to you. There are other people to think about. Now I guess the argument is there is no real danger, and if that's the case, I guess . . . whatever turns your crank. But I'd argue even then, how do you know you can't write as well when not in pain, when you don't try it?

I guess I'm biased though. I'm of the Laurence Olivier school of thought. When Dustin Hoffman showed up on set having deprived himself of sleep for I think 72 hours or something so he could truly embody the role Olivier said to him: "My dear boy, why don't you just act?"

kuwisdelu · Jan 6, 2010

kaitie said:
I've never been one to buy into the immortality through writing clause. Sure, you might be the next Shakespeare and have your work read even in hundreds or thousands of years from now, but a million? Two million? How about five thousand? (At which point they would doubtless be having to translate the darn things anyway because of language evolution). That's of course requiring we don't destroy the earth to the point of societal collapse and end up in another dark age in the next hundred years, of course.

I'm just saying forever is a long time, and not even writing lives forever.

You're right. But I have a much better chance of impacting the world through writing than anything else I could do. Not trying my hardest would feel selfish. I don't care how arrogant that sounds.

virtue_summer · Jan 6, 2010

kuwisdelu said:
Without condemning or condoning, whatever works, works.

I won't live forever. My writing could.

Only if you can write. You can't do that if you're dead. So think of it this way: the more you take care of your health the more chance you have of living longer and writing more and better stories.

kuwisdelu · Jan 6, 2010

virtue_summer said:
Only if you can write. You can't do that if you're dead. So think of it this way: the more you take care of your health the more chance you have of living longer and writing more and better stories.

You have to think of it both ways. Which came first? The feeling or the story? Which gave birth to which?

ChainsawLicker · Jan 6, 2010

I don't. I've gone through so much physical and emotional pain in my life that it's permanently etched in my mind. No need to experience it again as a refresher.

L.C. Blackwell · Jan 6, 2010

PGK and Kuwisdelu:

I don't know either one of you, or how you deal with the other parts of your life, but I suspect that if I did know you, I'd be suggesting that you seek treatment for clinical depression.

Deliberate, self-inflicted damage, whether it's cutting, purging, bone-breaking, or playing Russian roulette with your blood sugar, is an indication to any mental-health professional that intervention is greatly needed. It should be an indication to you as well.

Aschenbach · Jan 6, 2010

kuwisdelu said:
Without condemning or condoning, whatever works, works.

I won't live forever. My writing could.

Umm...maybe. Your writing might live forever. You could rank alongside Plato and Shakespeare for all I know.

But seriously, the idea that you need to flirt with death to be a great/credible writer is pretty immature. It's a hangover from Coleridge/Burroughs/and all those other suicidal types.

Wavy_Blue · Jan 6, 2010

Mary Shelley didn't have to personally reanimated a jigsaw-puzzle corpse to write her brilliant and chilling Frankenstein. And yet, centuries later her work is still being read, appreciated, and praised.

In my honest opinion, having to inflict pain on oneself in order to write "the perfect scene" is a crutch that is used in place of a weak imagination.

Hurting yourself for that perfect scene . . .

They put those words in my head!

Always learning

They put those words in my head!

Revolutionize the World

Adventure is out there!

back for more

Around

Sever your leg please.

Bartender, gimme a Linux Mint

With great power comes

Court Jester

Revolutionize the World

With great power comes

Rambler

Rewriting My Destiny

THE RECKLESS RESCUE is out now!

Revolutionize the World

Always learning

Revolutionize the World

Oh snap, it's onomatopoeia!

Keeper of Fort Blanket

Moral Marjorie

Adventure is out there!