November 21, 2003

Writing Like Crazy: a Word on the Brain

By ALICE WEAVER FLAHERTY

Writing is one of the supreme human achievements. No, why should I be reasonable? Writing is the supreme achievement. It is by turns exhilarating and arduous, and trying to write obsesses and distresses students, professional writers, and diarists alike. Writers explain why they write (and have trouble writing) one way, freshman-composition teachers another; literary critics and psychiatrists and neurologists have increasingly foreign explanations. These modes of thinking about the emotions