Why do people write? You have to spend hours and hours in your own head – a dark and inhospitable place for most people. The only recognition you’re likely to receive is being spit upon while walking down the street – if you’re lucky. You will be ostracized at parties the moment you claim to be a writer, the main reason that directories of alternate careers are now available on the World Wide Web.
Despite all the drawbacks, many people still seem to want to become writers. Some, despite the world’s best efforts to discourage them, will actually succeed. What is the difference between those who dream of enduring the daily abuse of being a professional writer and those who actually become one? Several theories have been developed to answer this question.
Suffering.
It is well known that William Shakespeare had to have both legs amputated when they were crushed under a falling opera diva, yet he went on to write some of the world’s best known plays. Evelyn Waugh was married 27 times before he finally sat down to write Brideshead Revisited. Great suffering, it is believed, results in great art.
Still. At the age of 15, William Pitcairn cut off his nose to win a bar bet that he wouldn’t spite his face. On and off for the rest of his life, he would suffer from ice cream brain freezes even though he never ate ice cream because he was lactose intolerant. He also complained of phantom smells – strawberry rhubarb and napalm prominent among them.
Betty-Lou Grapplingham had 27 children in 12 years. This was something of a medical controversy, since she had her tubes tied after her seventh child, her husband was castrated after their tenth child and she stopped having sex after her fifteenth child. By the time she was 35, she looked like she was 80.
Despite their elaborate sufferings, neither William nor Betty-Lou ever wrote a single word; in fact, there is evidence to suggest that neither of them was in any way literate. And, they are but two of perhaps millions of examples of people who suffered tremendously but never felt the urge to pursue a literary career.
Substance Abuse.
Ernest Hemmingway was a notorious drunk, who, in the final stages of his life, was known for shooting off his mouth, among other body parts. Lord Byron was a firm believer in the tenet that absinthe makes the heart grow fonder (although, in his case, it made the heart grow fainter). William S. Burroughs abused substances there wasn’t even a name for! Even more so than actors (although, to be sure, it is a close thing), substance abuse appears to be common among writers.
Still. Angelino Fabrizzi had cross-addictions to alcohol, painkillers and John Grisham novels. The only writing he is believed to have done is his name in snow with his urine.
Franklin Marinara had the odd habit of burning teddy bears in a bonfire so that he could inhale the fumes. His family members report that, when high, he would fantasize that he was in Wonderland with Dorothy, Godzilla and Rupert Murdoch. In his frequent bouts of withdrawal, he would curl up into a ball in a dark corner and sing “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” in a raspy baritone. Marinara never wrote a word.
Madness.
It is well documented that Franz Kafka suffered from agoraphobia – the irrational fear of being stuck in a Greek agora. The Marquis de Sade was placed in an asylum for the last years of his life (but the joke was on the authorities who put him there, because he actually enjoyed it). Sylvia Plath took her fondness for baking just a little too far. Madness seems to be common among people who write.
Still. Many people have exhibited signs of madness without picking up pen or laptop computer. Howard Turgidson ate 27 cell phones in the space of less than an hour, earning him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records and the Bellevue Home for the Faint of Heart. Marissa Bobombissa, of Papua, Tennessee, was convinced she was a hoot owl, and for years subsisted on a diet of mice her family threw past her bedroom window in the middle of the night. Englebert Hammerschmidt stalked Talisa Soto for years under the delusion that she was a star of stage and screen, then hung himself from a No Parking, 9-5 Mondays to Fridays sign when he realized how he had wasted the best years of his life.
When you remove writing from the equation, madness just seems to be common among people.
Could it be that what differentiates writers from ordinary people is that…they write?