A paradox young writers get to discover. Bad things that happened to you can sometimes be used to write a good story. For the writer, the bad over time becomes good, and the formula for comedy is tragedy, plus time, equals comedy.
I tell my students not to go out and make a train wreck of their lives. No reason to run with the bulls. The bulls will find you.
The bad will come along to test you, to make you a strong person with character, plenty on its own. It also will not end up being completely bad if you can use what you learned, or the experience itself, in your writing.
This gets close to the notion of felix culpa, the fortunate fall, found, I was taught, in Milton's Paradise Lost.
What boring people Adam and Eve would have been if they had remained in the Garden of Eden.
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