Why write?

Jan 18, 2008 at 5:47 PM
4 comments

"I seem to have lost all sense of style and yet I am haunted by the necessity of style. And that story I can't write weaves itself into all I see, into all I speak, into all I think, into the lines of every book I try to read."
-Joseph Conrad.
Cited at greater length in The Midnight Disease, Alice W. Flaherty.

The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain

Alice Weaver Flaherty

This book is learned, engaging and moving. Flaherty, a neuroscientist and a superior writer, considers the cognitive, neurological and emotional aspects of writing, and by extension, creative expression. The balance she strikes between those three facets of creativity is an achievement made still more notable because she explores them through many different instances of writer's block and obsessive writing (hypergraphia): the greats of literary and intellectual history, her extraordinary personal experiences, and patients she's studied are the main illustrations, evoked easily and gracefully throughout the book.

The Midnight Disease is not a self-help book or a diagnostic manual, but I recommend it to anyone seeking to better understand dissertation writing or any other professional, creative endeavor.

For a sense of the book's scope and the author's authority, see this 2004 profile in the Harvard Gazette.

4 comments

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writing

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I've heard of this book. Sounds interesting.

[this is good]

I love the Conrad quote even if I don't love Conrad himself. I've just been writing a document on my philosophy of the teaching of writing. Can I send it to you for your input?

Ishtar, it is such a well-written and poetic yet scientific read that you would probably enjoy it.
Renée, oui! I'm working on job-search-related writing myself and would be happy to take a look.

'necessity of style', 'the midnight disease' - there are classrooms and theories embedded in those brief phrases alone.

Why write?

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