Must We Suffer For Our Art?

This morning I found myself watching Sex and the City. It got me to thinking; do we, as artists, writers and creators need to suffer for our art to be truly great?

I ask this because, when you think about it, the greatest works of history, the greatest works of our time were all created when the artist or writer was at their lowest ebb. Take J K Rowling for instance. She was living in a council flat, newly divorced and surviving on benefits when she first wrote Harry Potter. Now she is a multi-millionaire with a happy marriage and a successful writing career. Virginia Wolfe struggled with depression for much of her adult life, eventually taking her own life but during her weakest moments she wrote some wonderful novels and even established a printing press to get them out to the public. Vincent Van Gogh was a great painter, ranging from realism to surrealism and everything in between but his personal life was a shambles with several failed relationships and one break up so devastating he went so far as to cut off his ear. J R R Tolkien took his experiences in the trenches of World War 1, the horror, the atrocities and the camaraderie and turned it into what is possibly one of the greatest works of the 20^th Century, the Lord of the Rings.

So, the question is, do modern writers and artists truly need to suffer great emotional upheaval to create great works? Or is that now a thing of the past? Is it the emotional trauma that pushes us to reach our true potential? When I’m writing or drawing I can feel that there is more there, something more than what I can do. And yet it won’t come out. It’s as though there’s a door blocking the way and I don’t have the key. I can’t help but wonder if maybe the key is emotional suffering, that I need something to shake me to my core in order for me to break through this door and create that which I’m truly capable of. Or it may simply be wishful thinking on my part, who knows.

What do you think?

Research and language creation

Looking at the title I've just realised that I'm absolutely rubbish at coming up with titles, for blogs and for stories. I need to work on that.
Anyway, back to the task at hand. Last night, while watching Lord of the Rings, extended edition, I was inspired. It was great. I was just sat on my bed, surrounded by paper and writing stuff about the world that I'm planning to set most of my stories in. I ended up doing lots of organising, which let's face it, I love. I've finally found a way to bring in the elves and dwarves and other crazy creatures that make fantasy more fantastic. I blame Terry Brooks for this of course. Him and Tolkien. First I had to figure out what kinds of creatures I wanted to include within Geniania (that's the world, yes.. the name needs a little work) and then I had to figure out why they didn't appear in the history of the countries I'd already written about. I've got the first few figured out but may well include others later as I write stories in other countries.
I'm also, dare I say it, looking at creating languages for these other races which is both exciting and nerve-wrecking. I probably won't use much of any languages I do create, just a few words. Either way though I'm hoping that it's going to be a fun and interesting thing to do, even if it has little baring on the stories themselves.
People are probably reading this and wondering why am I putting so much research and work into backstory that won't be relevant to the stories themselves or that the readers may well never hear about. People could think "it's fantasy, why do you need to research anything? You can just make it up and say it's that way because the world says so" There's a simple answer to both of those questions. It makes the world and its people seem much more real. I could simply start writing without doing any of this research but I'd probably get stuck halfway through and get my facts all mixed up.
There's other stuff I need to research too but it's not really world specific, more story specific and it would give things away. All this research could very well see me in the library at some point though so I need to track down Nottingham Library as well as Cotgrave and West Bridgeford so that I can have a wander around.