I have a theory about writers. We’re all mad. Maybe not all of us but a larger proportion than you’d expect in the population at large. Or so it seems when I consider my writer friends and the writers that I follow on social media. Many of us seem to be struggling with mental health problems. Although my perception could be affected by bias due to the large proportion of writers in the people that I follow on social media, my theory is backed up by at least one scientific study. What interests me is why? Is it cause and effect? And if it is, in which direction does it flow? Or is it a correlation with a more complicated explanation? It seems to me there are a few possible explanations and some or all might be applicable in individual cases.
Explanation 1
Some writers can’t hold down a real job. I’m being a bit facetious here. When I say some writers, I’m actually talking about myself. A very severe depression and memory problems after electroconvulsive therapy meant I gave up work as a research scientist several years ago. I didn’t know what else to do so I started writing. And although I love writing and do it every day, I don’t count it as a real job because it feels like I’m just messing around at home and it doesn’t pay the bills. (I’m not entirely serious here. Writing is definitely a real job.)
Explanation 2
Writing serves as a type of therapy. I’ve found keeping journals and writing poetry to be really helpful during terrible times. Even if you aren’t writing deliberately as therapy, it can help relieve the pain of mental ill health. In this explanation, the mental illness is the cause, the writing the effect.
Explanation 3
Sensitive, empathic people receptive to the world make good writers because to write well you have to be observant and be able to put yourself in other’s shoes. But this quality might make those same people oversensitive to the world and its problems and perhaps more vulnerable to mental illness. In this case, there is a correlation between the two rather than a cause and effect.
Explanation 4
Many writers, myself included, have particularly strong internal commentaries. This is great for chatting with characters you’ve made up, not so great for battling the internal critic. The internal critic might be the cause of some aspects of mental illness. And it doesn’t stretch credibility too far to imagine that the ability to see and hear imaginary characters might be a benign manifestation of the visual and auditory hallucinations that become more extreme and problematic in psychosis.
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IMAGE CREDITS: Doll by Aimee Vogelsang on Unsplash; Abandoned psychiatric hospital by Blogging Guide on Unsplash; Corridor by Echo Grid on Unsplash
I loved reading My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Stroud this year. The situation of a young mother visited by her own mother while in hospital sparks as series of memories that offer a patchwork of recollections that allows the reader to meander through Lucy’s early experiences. As a writer I enjoyed the journey which made me reflect upon the use of memoir techniques in fiction writing.
The Growing Season by Helen Sedgwick. Sedgwick’s speculative fiction is based on the premis of reproductive technology having been developed which allows both men and women to carry prosthetic wombs, thus sharing the work of gestating a child. We view the world Sedgwick has created from multiple viewpoints – those who see the technology as having liberated women from the dangers and drugery of natural childbirth, and those who are sceptical. A good page turner, with mystery and a nuauced exploration of sensitive issues around reproduction and birth.
My favourite reads this year were the wonderful, strange and riveting Milkman by Anna Burns, and Rachel Cusk’s trilogy of novels Outline, Transit and Kudos. Cusk’s books reveal, or rather explore, how men talk and women listen. I thought the last scene of Kudos was brilliant. I also read, getting to it rather late, Denise Reily’s poetry collection Say Something Back which is addressed to, and speaks about her late son. Along with much else, each writer explores voice, what it is to speak and what it is to be heard, and works the platforms of novel and poem to see what it can carry in terms of voice and points of view. Wonderful, wonderful stuff.
Milkman by Anna Burns. There are many books that I admire and enjoy but every now and then a novel comes along which I wish with every cell of my body that I had written myself. Milkman was one of those novels. Despite the difficult subject and the sinister undertones, it is a really funny book with a harsh, wry humour. I absolutely loved it.
In Amy Sackville’s Painter to the King (Granta Books, 2018), you see the court of Philip IV of Spain through the eyes of Diego Velazquez; the relationship between artist and monarch is poignantly portrayed. Another memorable novel involving a painter is Ali Smith’s How to be both (Hamish Hamilton, 2014): ingenious and riveting, it involves story lines separated by centuries and yet intersecting. Beautiful and unusual is the graphic-novel version (Feltrinelli, 2018) of La Mennulara, a collaboration between artist Massimo Fenati and author Simonetta Agnello Hornby; the original novel by Agnello Hornby is available in English as The Almond Picker (Penguin, 2006). Jhumpa Lahiri has written Dove mi trovo (Guanda, 2018) in Italian; the sparse literary style underscores the predicament of her central character, a woman longing at once for connection and detachment. Issued in 2018 with an introduction by Rachel Cusk, The Little Virtues (Daunt Books, 2018) is a collection of essays penned between 1944 and 1960 by Natalia Ginzburg, one of Italy’s greatest writers; each essay gives us a portrayal of a historical time we should not forget, as well as a wealth of timeless reflections.
Helen M Taylor 