It’s a truism that artists suffer; we all suffer from time to time, but artists especially so, that’s what the world tells me. The art world is cruel, competitive, scarcely recognised and poorly funded – you may as well give up now.

To become an artist then, to succeed, you need to work hard, but ultimately – here’s the clincher – you need to suffer. In this tough-love world of creativity if you aren’t suffering for your art, if you’re not martyring yourself, you’re not doing it right.

Where’s your commitment? Don’t you understand? To be an ‘artist’ the ‘work’ you produce is not merely work, it’s a ‘child’, a thing born from within you, a fragment of your soul, your blood, sweat and tears, your pride and joy.

God forbid art should come easily or naturally. No, no, you must suffer. You’re not allowed to enjoy yourself, that’s not what art’s about. Genius is diligence, yes, but it’s also a good dosage of depression, madness, anxiety and tears, that’s apparently needed to create a true artist.

This appraisal of the ‘tortured artist’ was encapsulated most memorably in recent years in a fashion spread in VICE which saw female writers depicted in acts of suicide.

In those final artistic tableaux, suffering was shown as a trait to be captured in high-res definition. The socks used for strangling were for sale (the dress for drowning? Pucci). The shoot may as well have read Do It Yourself.

Yet surely we all know that suffering is rarely, if ever productive. Worrying, fretting, and stressing out about work no matter how often we do it, is rarely conducive to the finished product. The notion that the suffering of artists, from Van Gogh to Sylvia Plath, was beneficial and aided their works in some way is obscene.

They may have produced different works, yes, but would they have been worse? Doubtful - Vincent would still have had two ears. Strife and suffering all too often act as a short-hand for seriousness in our society. To prize beauty and joy, to parade happiness and love is too often dismissed as childish, unseemly, immature.

Theodor Adorno reminds us that despite it all, art holds a crucial power in forcing us to confront fears we’d rather forget: "The abundance of real suffering permits no forgetting...[it] demands the continued existence of the very art it forbids".

After all the concept of the artist as the "exemplary sufferer", as Susan Sontag points out, is a modern fascination, where the "suffering soul is considered more authentic", where "we look to artists to seek out the truth, on some level the more an artist suffers the more truthful we believe her to be".

An ideology is created whereby the aspiring artist is somehow excused – even encouraged– to "seek out opportunities to suffer, sacrifice, live ascetically".

The fact is, to write requires time alone. Whether it’s in A Room of One’s Own, a library, a coffee shop, or a punt, to write we need our own minds to ourselves. We need instruments, from shiny laptops to jaded basics biros, to do the trick and transfer thoughts into the reality of written words.

You may need to sit at your laptop and type away into the night and then into the morning to produce an essay without speaking to a soul for several hours, yet this ritual of writing is commonplace for most students and for the majority the cycles of time spent alone in one’s room weeping over couplets and equations are made bearable through the social highs we experience once the work is done. (Cindies anyone?)

“Ahh”, I hear the poets cry “but for a creative artist the work is never done!” Indeed, work is a broad term here, and living itself for many people is work. Relationships take work, work does not come in one predetermined package – it’s a notion that covers a million differing actions.

But it is never fun or useful to be miserable. The grotesque allure of the broody frown, the cigarette-toting pout, the sullen unimpressed gaze may seem glamorous for a second or so, but is by no means a prerequisite for artistic fulfilment, and certainly not for success.

Recent studies have even disproved the myth that those working in the arts are somehow predestined for depression, presenting evidence that despite the harsher economic conditions of the art world those in the creative sector are actually much happier than those out of it, their job satisfaction averaging above their counterparts.

So why does this myth of creative strife and creative turmoil persist?
Life is a mixed bag, grab the silver lining, play on swings and roundabouts, you know how all the sayings go. Don’t struggle unnecessarily, save the sadness for the times it’s really needed.

Whether it’s running away from week five like Coleridge, or garnishing a Byron-esque reputation of being "mad, bad and dangerous to know", great artists seem to have at least one thing in common – they lived.