I never believed that suffering was essential to making good art. But then I suffered. And...

... I made the best art of my life.

I’ve always been a firm opponent of the idea that to be a true “artist” you need to live in a hovel and be an alcoholic. Perhaps that works for some people, but it doesn’t feel as if it’s very conducive to family life.

I’ve worked from the premise that if my life is stable, and I’m not worrying about money, I’ve got more time and emotional energy for my creative life. And I don’t need to abscond to the woods for months on end. I want to be among people as I create art about people.

I’ve been writing for most of my adult life - so that’s five unpublished novels and three screenplays produced between the ages of approximately 20 and 37. Throughout all of that time I held firm to my belief that I didn’t need to suffer to create good art. I was industrious and prolific in my spare time. Some of my work was even reasonably good. (Let’s not talk about the first couple of novels). I had occasional positive feedback, but ultimately didn’t get anywhere.

Then I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 37. And now my graphic memoir about my experiences is going to be published.

So, I suffered, and made the best art of my life as a result of my suffering. But I don’t think that this necessarily contradicts my core belief, and I’ll explain why.

Why are you mining your trauma?

The 2010s featured a glut of personal essays, mainly written by young women, which were confessional in nature. Many of them described traumatic experiences, and the experience of writing them and then having this vulnerability exposed may have been doubly traumatic. A good number of the outlets that published works like these have since folded, but there’s a lively continuing debate about the value of confessional essays, especially those written by women.

Commissioners for online essays are driven by the incentives of social media, which often means speed at the cost of introspection and quality, little regard for the author’s wellbeing and less interest in redemptive story arcs than in getting the curiosity-driven clicks.

But books are surely different. You can’t write a book in a couple of hours.

Creating my book was not therapeutic. Therapy enabled me to create my book.

Many people have assumed that creating my memoir must have been therapeutic, to which I always respond: absolutely not. I had to revisit some of the most painful experiences of my life.

I didn’t process my trauma on the page. I received therapy (from a real, medically qualified therapist). Once my trauma was processed I could examine my experiences from enough of a distance that I was able to figure out the story I wanted to tell.

So: did my suffering lead to meaningful art? Yes, but only in the sense that I took my experience as inspiration for a story. It opened my eyes to an entire dimension of human experience that I’d previously been pretty ignorant about.

Who is your story for?

In a recent piece, Naomi Kanakia raised interesting questions about the value of trauma in a narrative. Can trauma lead to positive change, or is it just another sign that the world is terrible?

Kanakia argues that trauma stories need at least a modicum of hope in humanity and should leave the door ajar for the possibility of positive change. I think I agree. Without that hope, a relaying of harrowing events is pretty nihilistic. I think this is a fine balance to strike: being honest about the pain and fear, but not leaving the reader feeling totally miserable.

A memoir is based on a real experience, but it’s still a story. And if you want people to read it, you need to give them a reason to pick up your book. Maybe if something luridly horrific has happened to you, that’s enough on its own to garner a few clicks or sell a handful of copies to nosy or prurient readers. But my cancer story is an example of suffering that’s widespread enough to be relatively banal. It was up to me to find a way of telling it that was original and intriguing.

Most suffering in this world is not unique in nature, so we need to use our craft to weave a compelling story around it. The upside of this lack of uniqueness is that if you do it well, many people will relate deeply to it.