Tortured genius

As we toil away in obscurity, it’s normal to fantasize about being a tortured genius who will be appreciated in the future, maybe even after their death, like so many great writers of yesteryear.

Hi,

As we toil away in obscurity, it’s normal to fantasize about being a tortured genius who will be appreciated in the future, maybe even after their death, like so many great writers of yesteryear.

Unfortunately, there is something people don’t get about “geniuses” who weren’t appreciated in their time.

Many of them were either unlikeable pricks or in some other way impeded their own success. Whether because of their personality or mental illnesses, the fact is that they were rather hard to like during their lives.

Given that I have many of the same mental illnesses people speculate these writers had during their lives, I have tremendous sympathy and empathy for their plight.

In many ways, it’s what drew me to their stories in the first place, but the facts are still the facts. People didn’t like them, and even when they did, these creatives sabotaged themselves.

• Emily Dickinson hid her poetry and demanded her sister burn all her correspondence upon her death. She only published 10 poems…