Sad art is popular. For some reason, people like it. I think maybe stories and music that relate suffering and sadness help us make sense of our lives, and maybe even feel better about them. Maybe they help us appreciate that our suffering isn't unique and that we're going to be okay.

I'm pretty good at producing sad art. Somebody commented just the other day to one of my stories that sadness is a special talent of mine.

I'm not any kind of important or well-known artist, but when I write sad stories, I do it for myself. I write to help process my feelings, get them out in the open, and then eventually to feel better.

And people like that, or at least they respond to it significantly. The better I'm able to make sadness come to life on the page, the more people seem interested in reading.

But it doesn't seem like I'm a good enough artist to fake it. It has to be real inside myself.

If the sadness I put on the page is genuine, if it comes from my own real suffering, that's a story people are more likely to read than not.

That doesn't mean that I (or any artist, I guess) deliberately sets out to create a primarily sad body of work. I write happy stories all the time. People just aren't as likely to read them. 😂

We humans are strange and wonderful creatures.