Are writers by nature unhappy?

By Dennis Mellersh

As we work at our writing today and think about the question of the challenges of how to write our book, here is some food for thought on the emotional makeup of a writer from the mystery and psychological novelist Georges Simenon*:

“Writing is considered a profession, and I don’t think it is a profession. I think that everyone who does not need to be a writer, who thinks they can do something else, out to do something else. Writing is not a profession, but a vocation of unhappiness. I don’t think an artist can ever be happy. ..If a man has the urge to be an artist, it is because he needs to find himself. Every writer needs to find himself through his characters, through all his writing.”

*Source: Writers at Work The Paris Review Interviews, Edited by Malcolm Cowley, The Viking Press, Viking Compass Edition, New York, 1959