Midnight Disease? Be Afraid of the Dark: Not!

Hello everyone. LaVel Moorehead here! I told y'all that I would read and blog about the book "The Midnight Disease," by Alice W. Flaherty. I've been intrigued by the so-called "Writer's Block," the state of mind or is it a "disease" that all writers fear. I just read the introduction to the book and let me tell ya', it's brilliant. I love Ms. Flaherty's use of anecdotes and comic relief in the book so it doesn't come acros as heavy, science related information. Let me share a little bit of what I read.
I love the quote in the beginning. Look at this quote by Roland Barthes in "Witing Degrees Zero." "A creative writer is one for whom writing is a problem." BAM. Those words hit me like a brick. Is that true? In some ways, yes, writing is a problem. It can be a problem because writers want to use the right words when they write. They want the words to flow on the page like a bubbling stream (no blockages, please.) But unfortunately, the blockages come anyway. Ms. Flaherty wants to address them.
Interestingly enough, Edgar Allen Poe and author Michael Chabon called Writer's Block the "Midnight Disease." I have no idea why they calld it the "Midnight Disease," but I guess I'll learn as I go along.
Ms. FLaherty says that the temporal lobes and the lymbic system affect the creative mind. TheTemporal lobes can produce the condition known as hypergraphia, or the strong inclination to write as much as possible. It can also produce Writer's Block, the exact opposite of hypergraphia. The second region or the lymbic system is linked to emoton and drive and it's lso connected to the temporal lobes. Hmm...
A beautiful reminder on page 9 of the book is the idea of "self-experimentation." It isn't smart to keep doing the same thing and retain the same habits when they don't work. For example, she says that if you find it hard to write at night, write in the morning or sometime during the day. That's just SMART. Experiment, don't repeat the same thing and expect a different outcome.
Ms. Flaherty gives an anecdote of giving birth to twin girls. (Aaaaw, so cute! ^__^) After giving birth, she fell into a "stupor" and needed a mood stabilizer. However, this stabilizer gave her Writer's Block. I hope Ms. Flaherty explains exactly HOW she knows that the medication gave her Writer's Block because she could have just been tired and needed rest from writing. It could've been that she fell into the cyclical mode where she needed to repair her creative juices. One last piece of advice that I'll share is tied to what I just said. Ms. Flaherty admits that writers go through an up and down process: One minute, writers are full of ideas and the next minute, nothing. It's all a part of a PROCESS and the sooner writers like myself realize that, the better shape they'll be in to cope with new challenges.
I hope you liked the post. Tell me what you think! I'll be back with more updates on "The Midnight Disease" and my novelette. Okay? See you then!
-LaVel