Pain Plus Time...But How Much?

There's a cliche among humorists: "comedy equals pain plus time."

The idea behind it is fairly simple: you can transform any experience--even a terrible experience--into something totally different, but you need to let it sit awhile, first.

Lately I've been wondering if maybe it applies to all forms of art. I feel like "pain plus time" is probably a reliable formula for tons of great literature, amazing songs, and stunning works of visual art, too.

But how much time do you need?

I think medium matters (for example, it's probably fair to assume a good breakup song could be written sooner, relative to the event, than a good breakup novel), so let's just stick to the one I know: writing.

How much time should you give pain--or fear, or trauma, or any other negative-but-powerful experience--to incubate before you try to give shape to it artistically?

Ideally let's avoid this.


I'm sure a lot of this depends on the person, but I think for most of us, there's a risk in trying to "tap" an experience too soon. My first-ever-novel-no-you-can't-see-it had a climactic scene that drew heavily on a specific, traumatic incident I went through in college.

But I started writing the book my senior year OF college, at which point I was still in the thick of  fallout from said event. I'd finished the first--and second, and third--drafts way before I really understood how I felt about what happened (in fact, I finished them before I'd actually worked through the actual real-life-physical consequences, to say nothing of the emotional ones).

So for me, at least, "two-ish years, during which you've made no effort to sift through the experience" is firmly on the "not long enough" side of the line.

The novel I'm shopping now, on the other hand, deals with something that I knew I wanted to write about the moment it started unfolding (it's based loosely on the events surrounding my father's death).

But I knew I couldn't, yet. Instead I jotted down details--scenes that were too crazy to be made up, moments I wanted to be able to look back on and say "oh dear GOD I'd forgotten how totally effed that was"--and sat on it.

For a little over five years.

I know that said novel will still benefit greatly from the molding of a hands-on agent and/or editor, but I feel much more confident that I've actually distilled what happened--chosen the important parts, picked out the emotional details that are most true and necessary to put on the page, found a few places where the whole mess was, in fact, funny.

It's not just a muddle of regurgitated hurt anymore; I've gotten far enough away from it that I can pick and choose from among my memories, lay them over a different scaffolding, and see that the story might need something that the experience didn't necessarily give me.

Apparently somewhere between two-ish and five-and-change years is my magical "okay, I can work with this, now" line.


How long do other people need before pain can become GOOD art (not just something that has spilled out over the seawall of your brain and splashed onto your medium of choice)?

And are there certain kinds of pain that are just too hard to ever translate into art?