THE EIGHT LAWS OF EXCESS

To truly deserve the mantle of 'compulsive tortured artist', you must have developed and perfected your craft using the hallowed "Eight Laws of Excess".

1. Discover art to allay your obsessive yearning to expose the demons within.
2. Expose the demons within.
3. Use art to pull yourself to pieces in search of any demons you've missed.
4. Use art to gather interesting admirers and explore their demons too.
5. Exhausted, wander aimlessly for a while to gain your strength.
6. Strengthened, turn to a new medium to inspire optimism.
7. Overly optimistic, realise how boring it is to smile all the time.
8. Bored without your demons, begin writing fiction and invent new ones.