The Midnight Disease

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

Alice W. Flaherty

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2015
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9780547525099
• Subtopic: Creative Writing
• Index: Psychology

"An original, fascinating, and beautifully written reckoning . . . of that great human passion: to write."—Kay Redfield Jamison, national bestselling author of An Unquiet Mind
 
Why is it that some writers struggle for months to come up with the perfect sentence or phrase while others, hunched over a keyboard deep into the night, seem unable to stop writing? In The Midnight Disease, neurologist Alice W. Flaherty explores the mysteries of literary creativity: the drive to write, what sparks it, and what extinguishes it. She draws on intriguing examples from medical case studies and from the lives of writers, from Franz Kafka to Anne Lamott, from Sylvia Plath to Stephen King. Flaherty, who herself has grappled with episodes of compulsive writing and block, also offers a compelling personal account of her own experiences with these conditions.
 
"[Flaherty] is the real thing . . . and her writing magically transforms her own tragedies into something strange and whimsical almost, almost funny."— The Washington Post
"This is interesting, heated stuff."— San Francisco Chronicle
"Brilliant . . . [a] precious jewel of a book . . . that sparkles with some fresh insight or intriguing fact on practically every page."— Seattle Post-Intelligencer
 
"Flaherty mixes memoir, meditation, compendium and scholarly reportage in an odd but absorbing look at the neurological basis of writing and its pathologies . . . Writers will delight in the way information and lore are interspersed."— Publishers Weekly

Index

Some men pretend to understand a Book

by scouting thro’ the Index:

as if a Traveller should go about to describe a Palace

when he had seen nothing but the Privy.

—Jonathan Swift, Mechanical Operation of the Spirit (1784)

If you don’t find it in the Index, look very carefully through the entire catalog.

—Sears, Roebuck, Consumer’s Guide (1897)

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

Action-emotion uncoupling, 190–92

ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), 111, 112, 117, 178

Adolescents’ sleep cycle, 128–29

Adrenaline (epinephrine), 7, 188, 190

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The (Twain), 88–89

Agency, sense of, 238

Aggression, 133, 188

Agraphia, 83–84, 158, 160, 170–71, 180

Akiskal, Hagop, 33

Alcohol and drug use, 15, 36, 67–68, 136, 168, 187, 188, 210, 213, 245, 249, 263

Alexia with agraphia, 171, 180

Alexia without agraphia, 170–71

Alexithymia, 71, 231–33, 245

Alice in Wonderland (Carroll), 27

Alienation from inner voice, 238–40, 242–48

Allen, Woody, 124, 162

Alphabets, 163, 164

Alprazolam (Xanax), 136

Alzheimer’s dementia, 72. See also Dementia

Amabile, Teresa, 25

Ambrose, Bishop, 166

Amis, Martin, 46

Amnesia, 61, 185

Amok, 38

Amphetamines, 128, 188

Amygdala, 22, 121, 186, 220, 258

Andersen, Hans Christian, 47, 178, 197

Andropause, 132

Anemia, 64–65

Angela (deaf woman with hallucinations), 249–50

Angular gyrus, 171, 180, 181, 182

Animals

bereavement in, 210

communication by, 149–50, 198–99, 222

dominance hierarchy o...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Hypergraphia: The Incurable Disease of Writing
• Literary Creativity and Drive
• Writer’s Block as State of Mind
• Writer’s Block as Brain State
• How We Write: The Cortex
• Why We Write: The Limbic System
• Metaphor, the Inner Voice, and the Muse
• References
• Illustration Credits
• Index
• About the Author
• Connect with HMH