So. Writing, eh?
I have a curious relationship with writing. I can’t seem to stop. By that, I mean every day I have to write at least something here and there, days when the words just materialize by themselves. I like days like those. They help build up my novel. Because there are often the other days when I can’t seem to get the words to come at all, or the world conspires to keep me from the computer or the foolscap, and then I just find my fount of inspiration to be as dry as a Californian gully.
I have used the phrase, “I have to write.” Each day, I aim for a certain portion of time to be spent on writing my novel. I bet you have more discipline than me and actually spend part of yours like that. Your words flow out and the project you’re working on builds up each time. The sentences flow. It’s great! Progress!
I have to write, but I don’t write for very long in one stretch. My poems are short, my episodes of working on my novel jags of writing with an eye on the word count. Sometimes the flow comes and I can get lost in writing for a time. But what if you couldn’t stop?
A blessing or a curse?
Did you know there are people who must write? Writers who literally can’t stop themselves? At times when I am searching for something to fill up a blog about, I wonder if having such a condition might be a blessing rather than a curse. I’m referring to the syndrome called hypergraphia. I have a good friend with this condition, and I know it can be frustrating for those reading reams and reams of what appear to be rambling thoughts.
First-century Roman poet Juvenal wrote about “the incurable writing disease,” so it’s been around for a long time. But it wasn’t until the 20th century that scientists explored the brain chemistry behind this largess with language.
“He can’t stop!!!”
Evidence now points to an abnormal interaction between the temporal and frontal lobes of the brain in hypergraphia. Activity in the temporal lobe is reduced, nudging greater activity in the brain’s frontal lobe, the area that increases the strength of complex behaviour like speech.
To someone like me, who writes in stops and starts, this sounds perfect! That famous inner editor shuts up, and the ideas flow. The condition is so rare that there are no hard and fast guidelines for treatment – and anyway, most hypergraphics do view it as a gift. I have never had the nerve to ask my friend what he thinks about it.
Alice Flaherty, who published a book on the subject in 2004 called The Midnight Disease (in case you want more detailed info about it), commented: “Hypergraphia is abnormal, but it’s not necessarily bad,” she wrote. “For us it is mostly pleasurable. You only suffer when you think you’re writing badly.”
Is there any value?
Ok, so what comes out might not always be pure genius, or even make sense, but sometimes it is, sometimes it does. It certainly provides hypergraphiacs with something to work with. Bet you’ll recognize these famous names: Stephen King, Sylvia Plath, Fyodor Dostoevsky Isaac Asimov, and Edgar Allan Poe.
Pretty good company to be in if you ever find yourself unable to stop writing, eh?
