Never write during a divorce?

[Chimera]

Aside from the fact that it often takes longer than 6 months to finalize a divorce, you mean?

Gee, mine only took three months.

Three months _after_ getting her family (who were paying for her attorney) involved because she'd spent FIVE MONTHS refusing to negotiate a settlement while accusing me of fraud and telling them that I was the one who was refusing to negotiate. Yeah, they were thrilled to learn she'd been doing that on their dime.

(So that'd be 8 months total...)

Oh gee, no. Of course divorces don't make you bitter!

 

[Alzrius]

Reading this thread really makes me worried about Ashes & Amber, the new Dragonlance book from Margaret Weis. The book is about the character Mina, from the War of Souls trilogy.

She and husband Don Perrin were supposed to be working on a trilogy about Taladas, but that was cancelled due to their divorce, and she announced this instead. I can only wonder at what it will reflect now...

 

[talinthas]

well, Amber and Ashes turned out fine (i have an advanced copy). The book really affected by her divorce, imo, was _Mistress of Dragons_. Man, that book screams in relationship pain.

 

[barsoomcore]

This is nonsense. Emotional events affect people, of course -- in completely unpredictable ways. Teckla is, in my opinion, the book that made Steven Brust into a serious writer rather than just another genre writer. It's when Brust stops writing interchangable (if good) fantasy novels and starts creating literature.

Some people respond to pain sometimes by withdrawing and blaming and expressing shallow rage and dull pointless whining. Some people (or even the same people at different times) respond to pain by exploring it deeply and bringing forth real truths that they then share with the world in beautiful art.

Farley Mowat's dog died, so he wrote The Dog Who Wouldn't Be. Tolkien watched his friends perish senselessly in the First World War and wrote The Lord of the Rings. Lord Byron got trashed by his wife and chased out of the country and wrote the final canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimmage.

Great art can come out of great pain. As can terrible art. If there were a formula, everyone would use it.

 

[Hypersmurf]

This is nonsense. Emotional events affect people, of course -- in completely unpredictable ways. Teckla is, in my opinion, the book that made Steven Brust into a serious writer rather than just another genre writer. It's when Brust stops writing interchangable (if good) fantasy novels and starts creating literature.

Yeah, but it's not fun...

I find I tend to read Teckla more out of a sense of duty than enjoyment, whenever I reread the series.

-Hyp.

 

[SableWyvern]

Some of the stories in Stephen Donaldson's Reave the Just anthology were written during his divorce, and he states in his introduction that all (or at least most of) were influenced in some way by it.

And it happens to contain some excellent stories, overall being vastly superior to his first anthology (Daughter of Regals). Additionally, IIRC, the Gap series was also at least partially written over that same period, and it too is exceptional reading IMO.

I personally find it much easier to write when I'm either very happy or very depressed. After final getting through a very messy break-up many years ago, I found myself missing the angst from time to time, ruing the sudden difficulty I had finding inspiration.

So, in short, I strongly disagree with the original assertion.

 

[Pielorinho]

I agree with barsoomcore about Teckla. It's the farthest I've read in the Brust series (because my library sucks, not because of the book itself); up until that book, I was pretty skeptical of the series. It's not my favorite work by him, but I think the way his divorce informed that book gave it a lot of emotional depth.

It's an interesting question, though. I'd agree with the OP inasmuch as some writers respond to trauma by writing cathartic fiction, rather than good fiction. They shouldn't not write, but maybe they should consider not publishing a work that functions better as therapy than as literature.

Daniel