Why Writers Write: Surprising clues from neurobiology

As my guides for an approach to this topic, I take Oliver Sacks and V. S Ramachandran,
two neurologists who explore the worlds of the neurologically eccentric with creativity,
keen observation, and a novelist’s sense of reaching inside existence.

Characteristics shared by many great authors:

1. They write a lot. Many are seized by a compulsion to write and are intensely unhappy if they
cannot write.
2. Inspiration appears to come from somewhere outside of themselves. They hear voices or feel
that they are taking dictation while they write. Many say that their work “wrote itself” or that at a
certain point in composition their characters began to act independently of their will. They have
rituals that allow their muse to take over.
3. They have suicidal thoughts or impulses as well as moments of unspeakable bliss.
4. They have insomnia and their creative ideas evolve while they are awake at night.
5. They experienced the early death of one or both parents.
6. They have a chronic illness or were chronically ill as children.
7. They are neurologically atypical (migraine, epilepsy, Asperger’s, hypomania).

Usually when we focus on what makes writers great, we look at how well they use words. Today
I want to focus on the subject matter and motivation for the best literature. What I say here is
speculative, but based on a lifetime of reading.

Great literature stages intricate and real moments of existence. Literature is a way to convey
transformative experiences that could not be shared in other ways. These experiences are often
traumatic and unbearable, but they also may be ecstatic and blissful. The best authors are not

only good at writing; they have undergone extraordinary experiences that changed their whole

sense of existence and they are driven to restage these experiences in symbolic form.

Saying that authors are neurologically atypical does not reduce their achievement. Everything

we are and do as human beings has a neurological substrate. The brain is not “just” an organ,

and our lives are not separate from our bodily experience. Extraordinary neurological states

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may be fleeting experiences of oneness in nature or unbearable experiences of loss, such as a
death in one’s family or the loss of one’s home. Organic conditions such as temporal lobe

epilepsy, postpartum “break,” intoxication, or insomnia may produce life-changing experiences.

For many reasons (brain plasticity, dependency on powerful attachment figures, less sense of

control), extraordinary states of consciousness are more common in childhood.

Psychosis, creative genius, and religious inspiration are all connected to increased experiences

of extraordinary states of consciousness—with striking similarities and crucial differences.

Many of the most honored artists and authors in history are thought to have had “fits”—perhaps

temporal lobe epilepsy, or perhaps some other form of seizures; examples are Jonathan Swift,

Vincent Van Gogh, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Gustave Flaubert.
These authors and artists share a cluster of traits called Geschwind syndrome that is found in
many temporal lobe epileptics between seizures: insomnia, hypomania, hypergraphia,

hyperproductivity, intensified sense of significance, hyposexuality. [See Flaherty; also Hughes,

who is skeptical of most retrospective diagnoses of epilepsy.]

Other artists/authors show a similar constellation of traits with respect to their work that are
connected to temporal lobe functions:

submission to a vast force beyond their control

extraordinary recall of voices and other sensory traces; hearing voices
a compulsion to write—hypergraphia, graphomania
heightened mental clarity and super-significance
distortions and fluctuations of body image, including size, “ownership” or alienation of
body parts
sleep disturbances, including night terrors, insomnia, and sleepwalking

Besides temporal lobe epilepsy, other neurological diagnoses common to great authors are
bipolar disorder (Virginia Woolf), Asperger’s syndrome (Hans Christian Andersen), migraine
(Carroll), and post-traumatic stress disorder (Woolf). All these conditions inflict intrusive and

shocking “attacks” that convey a heightened sense of significance but also a sense of not being

in control. And during or after these attacks, the sufferer is driven to write.

Galbraith, Senior Summer School, 7/29/10, page 2

1. Virginia Woolf’s “moments of being”:

"The shock-receiving capacity is what makes me a writer" [72].

I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy
hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a
token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is
only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power
to hurt me. . . . ["A Sketch" 72]
http://muse.jhu.edu.libproxy.sdsu.edu/journals/diacritics/v027/27.3freeman.html

Virginia Woolf fictional quote:

From Mrs. Dalloway—the mind of Septimus Smith: She brought him his papers, the things he had
written, things she had written for him. She tumbled them out on to the sofa. They looked at them
together. Diagrams, designs, little men and women brandishing sticks for arms, with wings — were
they? — on their backs: circles traced round shillings and sixpences — the sun and stars; zigzagging
precipices with mountaineers ascending roped together, exactly like knives and forks; sea pieces with
little faces laughing out of what might perhaps be waves: the maps of the world. Burn them! He cried.
Now for his writings; how the dead sing behind rhododendron bushes; odes to Time; conversations with
Shakespeare; Evans, Evans, Evans — his messages from the dead; do not cut down trees; tell the Prime
Minister. Universal love: the meaning of the world, Burn them! He cried.

But Rezia laid her hands on them. Some were very beautiful, she thought. She would tie them up (for
she had no envelope) with a piece of silk.

2. Lewis Carroll’s trips down the rabbit hole

Sometimes an idea comes in the night when I have to get up and strike a light and note it down —
sometimes when out on a lonely walk, when I have had to stop and with half-frozen fingers jot down a
few words which should keep the new-born idea from perishing — but whatever or however it comes, it
comes of itself. Lewis Carroll

"What a curious feeling!" said Alice. "I must be shutting up like a telescope!"

And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that
she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she
waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this;
"for it might end, you know," said Alice to herself; "in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder
what I should be like then?" And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle
is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing. [continued on next page]

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After a while, finding that nothing more happened, she decided on going into the garden at once; but,
alas for poor Alice! when she got to the door, she found she had forgotten the little golden key, and
when she went back to the table for it, she found she could not possibly reach it: she could see it quite
plainly through the glass, and she tried her best to climb up one of the legs of the table, but it was too
slippery; and when she had tired herself out with trying, the poor little thing sat down and cried.

"Come, there's no use in crying like that!" said Alice to herself rather sharply. "I advise you to leave off
this minute!" She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it), and
sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and once she remembered
trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against
herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. "But it's no use now,"
thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one
respectable person!"

Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very
small cake, on which the words "EAT ME" were beautifully marked in currants. "Well, I'll eat it," said
Alice, "and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep
under the door: so either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!"

She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself "Which way? Which way?", holding her hand on the top
of her head to feel which way it was growing; and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the
same size. To be sure, this is what generally happens when one eats cake; but Alice had got so much into
the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid
for life to go on in the common way.

3. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s seconds of terror and bliss:

Fyodor Dostoyevsky reporting on his experience just before a seizure:

"For several instants I experience a happiness that is impossible in an ordinary state, and of which other
people have no conception. I feel full harmony in myself and in the whole world, and the feeling is so
strong and sweet that for a few seconds of such bliss one could give up ten years of life, perhaps all of
life.

I felt that heaven descended to earth and swallowed me. I really attained god and was imbued with
him. All of you healthy people don't even suspect what happiness is, that happiness that we epileptics
experience for a second before an attack."

The character Kirilov in Dostoevsky’s novel The Possessed: "It's nothing earthly. You forgive nothing
because there is nothing to forgive...It is much higher than love! What is so terrifying about it is that it's
so terribly clear and such gladness. If it went on for more than five seconds the soul could not endure it
and must perish. In those five seconds I live through a lifetime, and I'm ready to give my whole life for
them, for it's worth it."

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So why do writers write? Because they must.
“I have to . . . I have to. I'm very unhappy when I'm not writing. I need to write.” (Doris

Lessing, Nobel Prize in Literature)

Writing allows (compels?) authors to express the truth of their existence and to create a bridge

from their ecstatic and unbearable moments to the rest of us.

References
Brown, Julie. Writers on the Spectrum: How Autism and Asperger Syndrome Have
Influenced Literary Writing. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2010.
Flaherty, Alice W. “Writing Like Crazy: a Word on the Brain.”
Chronicle of Higher Education; 11/21/2003, Vol. 50 Issue 13, pB6,
------. The Midnight Disease. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
Hesselink, John. The Temporal Lobe and Limbic System.
http://spinwarp.ucsd.edu/NeuroWeb/Text/br-800epi.htm
Hughes, John. “Did All Those Famous People Really Have Epilepsy?” Epilepsy &
Behavior, Volume 6, 2, March 2005: 115-139. Concludes that Carroll, Van Gogh, Swift,
and others had disorders other than temporal lobe epilepsy.
LaPlante, Eve. Seized: Temporal Lobe Epilepsy as a Medical, Historical, and Artistic
Phenomenon. NY: HarperCollins, 1993.
Sheppard, Teresa. “Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and the Paranormal.”
http://www.assap.org/newsite/articles/Temporal%20lobe%20epilepsy.html
Van Mourik, Orli. “Quirky Minds: Hypergraphia: A River of Words.” Psychology Today, May 1,
2007. Quote: ”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,
spurring activity in the frontal, the area that potentiates complex behavior like speech. A
writer's inner critic goes quiet, and the ideas flow. What comes out might not be brilliant,
or even make sense, but it provides fodder for future editing.”

As an experience, madness is terrific... and not to be sniffed at, and in its lava I still find most of the
things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets as sanity does.

--Virginia Woolf

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Teresa Sheppard provides a description of her temporal lobe seizures:

TLE seizures are often very difficult to describe due to their visceral nature, but here are
descriptions of my experiences. . . :

1: “As I walked back to the cottage after watching the sunset from the beach, I was deep in
thought. The moon was rising over the mountain ahead of me and everything looked very
beautiful. I was suddenly overcome with an intense feeling of excitement and pure joy and I was
compelled to throw myself to the ground, which I did. I could feel the earth breathing, pulsating
beneath me. At this moment it was as if time had stopped and I became aware that I knew
everything there was to know and that I was an integral part of the universe and it would not
exist without me ... the moment was pure harmony with the universe and everything in it. This
event has affected my whole life ever since and I have wished for it to happen again. I have
never since known happiness like it. It was my epiphany, my one and only conversation with
God.”

There are times in our lives when we, or someone close to us, have experienced something
similar to the above, in different contexts. I was sixteen years old when this happened. I used to
call it my „initiation‟, but to what I wasn't sure. Let's just say that it was a feeling that I had been
privy to something incredibly important, something like a secret which would only be available
to a certain few people. I felt privileged and spiritual. I had never felt anything like it before. It
was this rapturous first seizure which possibly initiated the Dostoevsky‟s syndrome.

As time went on, the seizures started to become troublesome in that the initial feeling of joy was
replaced by fear and anxiety, the sense of connection replaced by disconnection, alienation and
feelings of unreality. They were often precipitated by going up a flight of stairs, reason unknown
but it seemed to be a major trigger or provocant for me. The warning or aura usually started with
a strong sense of Jamais vu (familiar surroundings become unrecognisable) or Déjà vu (if I was
somewhere unfamiliar it would be as if I'd been there before). There would be intense anxiety
and always a strange rising feeling in my guts; random memory flashbacks which seemed to
have nothing to do with my life but included childlike feelings, psychic feelings and
reminiscences which were buried deep in my subconscious suddenly filled me with an intense
nostalgia. I would often have auditory hallucinations, usually music or distorted, muffled sounds,
like the sound of people talking underwater. Perception of passing time was also distorted. I gave
some thought to the possibility that I might be becoming psychic in some way, not knowing that
I was having seizures. These thoughts were preferable to thoughts that I might be dying of a
brain tumour – I didn't dare tell anyone what I was going through.

2: “I got on to the bus and went up the stairs to get a seat, but before I got to the top, the funny
feeling in my stomach got me again. I sat in the first seat I could see and closed my eyes – I
willed the feeling of wanting to cry out to go away and it did. It left me with the familiar
pulsation in my head. This time I was aware of what I was doing but I was afraid that it had
happened while I was on public transport, which gave rise to a feeling of panic.”

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