Tag Archives: writing

The contagion of composition

What is it that causes a person to write, to want to write, even to need to write? Lots of people never have the desire to write, indeed could pass their entire lives quite happily without ever having learned to write–yet others seem unable to prevent themselves from writing. (Although the number of compulsive writers seems quite the larger to me, I doubt my circle of acquaintances constitutes a statistically valid sampling of the population.)

The same questions have haunted neurologist Alice Flaherty, so she did something about it: she wrote a book, The Midnight Disease. (It seems she is in some part the subject of her own research.) I haven’t read the book yet because I just purchased it, but it’s on the top of my reading pile, which I’m sure has caused a great deal of grumbling among the other books whose patient queue has been jumped.

Maybe I’ll feed my own disease and write a review of the book when I finish it.

Harder than I thought

It’s astonishing how difficult is it to write something cogent and interesting every day! I have no problem blathering on about all manner of inconsequential things in e-mails or my journal, but the realization that a large number of relative strangers will have access to my blog brings the internal editor out in full force. This entry is, in fact, an effort to push past that obstacle. I guess I’ve been successful, to a point. For today.

Stay tuned for further updates.