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The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain
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The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain Paperback - 2005

by Alice Weaver Flaherty

Neurologist Flaherty explores the drive to write, what sparks it, and what extinguishes it. She offers a brave and compelling account of the role of emotion and the ways in which neurological and mood disorders can lead to meager--or prodigious--creative output.


Summary

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.

First line

WRITING IS ONE of the supreme human achievements.

Details

  • Title The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain
  • Author Alice Weaver Flaherty
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Reprint
  • Pages 307
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Harper Paperbacks, Wilmington, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
  • Date 2005-01-18
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Bibliography, Illustrated, Index, Table of Contents
  • ISBN 9780618485413 / 0618485414
  • Weight 0.9 lbs (0.41 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9 in (20.57 x 13.72 x 2.29 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Writer's block, Authorship - Psychological aspects
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2003051143
  • Dewey Decimal Code 808.001

Media reviews

Citations

  • Ingram Advance, 01/01/2005, Page 88
  • Women's Review of Books, 12/01/2004, Page 11
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by Flaherty, Alice Weaver

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