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

What Underlies the human ability, desire, and even compulsion to write? Alice Flaherty first explores the brain state called hypergraphia -- the overwhelming desire to write -- and then the science behind its antithesis, writer's block. As a leading neurologist at a major research hospital, Flaherty writes from the front lines of brain research. Her voice, driven and surprisingly original, has its roots in her own experiences of hypergraphia, triggered by a postpartum mood disorder. Both qualifications lend power to Flaherty's vibrant connections between the biology of human longing and the drive to communicate, between drugs and productivity, between metaphor and emotion. The Midnight Disease charts exciting new territory in the relationship between the creative mind and the body. Flaherty -- whose engagement with her patients and passion for literature enrich each page -- argues for the importance of emotion in writing, illuminates the role that mood disorders play in the lives of many writers, and explores with profound insight the experience of being "visited by the muse." Her understanding of the role of the brain's temporal lobes and limbic system in the drive to write challenges the popular idea that creativity emerges solely from the right side of the brain. Finally, The Midnight Disease casts light on the brain functions and dysfunctions of writers past and present, from Dostoevsky to Conrad, from Sylvia Plath to Stephen King. The Midnight Disease brings the very latest brain science and a lively literary voice to bear on the most compelling questions surrounding human creativity.