Hypographia-the uncontrollable urge to write

banjo · Mar 15, 2006

CSI NY: Jamalot

The subplot of tonight's episode involves a murdur victim who has a story chapter written all over his body. The perp obviously has hypographia-the uncontrollable urge to write. I 'd never heard of this before.

I'd like to be motivated to write more, but uncontrollable? I don't think so. One thing is for sure, this guy really has the BIC concept down. I wonder if some of the more prolific writers have this trait. Do any of you? Would you want to have it?

I wonder also, how many words per day might such a person write. And how does this rate compare to ours.

I understand that this condition may apply not only to writing of words but the overproduction of music composition and paintings as well. Perhaps some of the well knowns artists, composers and painters from past centuries were so afflicted.

alaskamatt17 · Mar 15, 2006

I wrote 5,000 words yesterday and today. I write very often, but it's not uncontrollable. Maybe I have a mild case.

Mistook · Mar 16, 2006

The uncontrollable urge to write doesn't necessarily meant that you'll see any one project to competion. Nor does it mean you'll write anything worth reading.

Between e-mails, internet forums, my blog, and the many stories I never finish, it's a safe bet I spend most of my free time writing. But 99% of it is absolute bullsh*t.

BuffStuff · Mar 16, 2006

There is a book that studies Hypographia. It's called "The Midnight Disease". Being afflicted with it, is generally not a good thing. And yes, as others have noted, there is no guarantee that anything a person afflicted with the illness writes will be worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618230653/103-1404416-3985402?v=glance&n=283155

Jamesaritchie · Mar 16, 2006

Hypo

I have wondered whetehr or not Isaac Asimov might not have had at least a mild case. The man wrote more than anyone I can think of.

And Dean Koontz says he writes sixty to seventy hours every week. That would kill me.

But I suspect true hypographia is always a curse, never a blessing. I can't imagine anything good ever coming from it.

victoriastrauss · Mar 16, 2006

BuffStuff said:
There is a book that studies Hypographia. It's called "The Midnight Disease".

This is a fascinating book. It also takes a look at hypergraphia's opposite, writer's block.

- Victoria

TLHines · Mar 16, 2006

I, myself, seem to be suffering from Hypoamazonrankia, which is the uncontrollable urge to check my book's Amazon rankings several times daily. And it's still a few months before the book officially releases.

Avalon · Mar 16, 2006

I wish I had that! Or maybe a mild case of it, say, "the uncontrollable urge to work on the current novel from nine to noon every day."

Alas, my urge seems regrettably controllable.

Josie · Mar 16, 2006

I feel much better now having read on this loop there's a midnight disease called hypergraphia. Thank you.

I thought I had the ultimate curse, being a writer. I can't give it up, with all the fringe benefits such as writers block (though some writers say there is no such thing).

However, to know there are people out there with hypergraphia. Now that's the ultimate curse!

And yes, a touch of that affliction would be nice, but only if one could turn it off at will. But then would I be back where I am now?

Sigh

Shadow_Ferret · Mar 16, 2006

I suffer from hypographia. The most difficult task I face is I'm running out of closet space for all the dead bodies. They really do pile up.

Jamesaritchie · Mar 16, 2006

Numbers

TLHines said:
I, myself, seem to be suffering from Hypoamazonrankia, which is the uncontrollable urge to check my book's Amazon rankings several times daily. And it's still a few months before the book officially releases.

Be careful. Once the book is released, watching those Amazon numbers can drive you comletely mad. It's unbelievable how they jump way up and way down, then way up and way down again, in a remarkably short period of time.

cwfgal · Mar 16, 2006

Hmm...I would think the correct term for the compulsion to write is HYPERgraphia and HYPOgraphia would be its opposite, the same thing as writer's block. The prefix hyper means greater, higher, or a lot of, whereas the prefix hypo means the opposite. Hyperglycemia is a high blood sugar, hypoglycemia is a low blood sugar.

Beth

Shadow_Ferret · Mar 16, 2006

Good point. I should have thought of that since I suffer from HYPOthryoidism. A low functioning thyroid.

BuffStuff · Mar 16, 2006

Edit* I think it is technically hypergraphia..but i've seen to written as "hypographia" as well. I am pretty sure that it is "hypergraphia" we are talking about though, I just did some further searching into it

I've talked to some pro, full-time fiction writers that say they write 12+ hours per day, 7 days per week. I have to call BS on that (in many cases...but I am sure that there are a few who really do put in such a spartan work-ethic). I'm sure they are sitting in a chair 12+ hours a day but if a regimen that severe had remotely close to proportional productivity (per the time spent) they'd be coming out with, (at the very least) a few books a year...rather than one every 2-3 years. I think that in some cases it's a sense of bravado. The general public, regretfully, sees writing as an easy job, so often times I wonder if there is a compulsion-pressure to tell white lies about the average hours spent writing per day in order to "justify" the supposedly effortless life/jobs that writers have.

If Author A: genuinely needs to spend 12+ hours per day to achieve a production of 1 book every 2-3 years, then, something is, most likely, wrong. Too much emphasis is placed on Volume for its own sake, at least in our society. And there is a compulsion to do more and more and more to "earn your stripes" even if it kills us mentally, rather than finding the optimal volume/workload per day and sticking to it.

I'm not these authors, but I can't help but have a nagging feeling that 6+ hours of their 12-hour days are spent counting the cat-hairs on the writing desk. There is a point of diminishing returns with everything in life and I just get the feeling that in many cases, the overall productivity of the 12-hour-per-day writers would either stay the same, or even rise if they cut their workday in half.

And, for the ones who do put in the 12-hours days and have the output to show for it, more power to them. But for the ones who put in such a huge effort and only release a book every few years, I have to wonder what the heck is happening.

My above thoughts apply only to pro, full-time fiction writers, I know that there are many copywriters, editors and freelancers who put that level of time and dedication in, but since I don't have experience in those fields, I'm limiting my perspective on the topic.

Jamesaritchie · Mar 16, 2006

BuffStuff said:
Edit* I think it is technically hypergraphia..but i've seen to written as "hypographia" as well. I am pretty sure that it is "hypergraphia" we are talking about though, I just did some further searching into it

I've talked to some pro, full-time fiction writers that say they write 12+ hours per day, 7 days per week. I have to call BS on that (in many cases...but I am sure that there are a few who really do put in such a spartan work-ethic). I'm sure they are sitting in a chair 12+ hours a day but if a regimen that severe had remotely close to proportional productivity (per the time spent) they'd be coming out with, (at the very least) a few books a year...rather than one every 2-3 years. I think that in some cases it's a sense of bravado. The general public, regretfully, sees writing as an easy job, so often times I wonder if there is a compulsion-pressure to tell white lies about the average hours spent writing per day in order to "justify" the supposedly effortless life/jobs that writers have.

If Author A: genuinely needs to spend 12+ hours per day to achieve a production of 1 book every 2-3 years, then, something is, most likely, wrong. Too much emphasis is placed on Volume for its own sake, at least in our society. And there is a compulsion to do more and more and more to "earn your stripes" even if it kills us mentally, rather than finding the optimal volume/workload per day and sticking to it.

I'm not these authors, but I can't help but have a nagging feeling that 6+ hours of their 12-hour days are spent counting the cat-hairs on the writing desk. There is a point of diminishing returns with everything in life and I just get the feeling that in many cases, the overall productivity of the 12-hour-per-day writers would either stay the same, or even rise if they cut their workday in half.

And, for the ones who do put in the 12-hours days and have the output to show for it, more power to them. But for the ones who put in such a huge effort and only release a book every few years, I have to wonder what the heck is happening.

My above thoughts apply only to pro, full-time fiction writers, I know that there are many copywriters, editors and freelancers who put that level of time and dedication in, but since I don't have experience in those fields, I'm limiting my perspective on the topic.

Well, a lot of pro writers do turn out three or four or five or eight novels per year, but they do so under several pseudonyms, or a lot of what they write is someting other than novels. Many write short stories, screenplays, articles, do work for hire, etc.

Some, like Dean Koontz have several pseudonyms. Kootz has used around a dozen. And also says he rewrites each page up to thirty times before moving on to the next. I don't think there's any doubt Kootz writes at least nine or ten, or more, hours every day. Harlan Ellison has used somewhere around twenty-five.

The pro writers I now who say they write ten or twelve hours per dqay all really do write ten or twelve hours per day. This does not mean all those hours will be spent writing novels that will be released under their own names, or only on novels at all.

I have no doubt there are writers who exhagerrate how many hours they put in, but I know for a fact that a great many writers would rather be writign than doing anyting else there is to do, and these writers put in a God Almighty lot of hours each and every week.

You optimum workload depends on who you are. For some, two hours per day is pure torture, and for others twelve hours per day is a walk in the park.

I've found that anything more than five hours per day eventually burns me out, but as a younger fellow, I frequently wrote twelve or fourteen or sixteen hours per day.

BuffStuff · Mar 16, 2006

Thanks for the quick reply, James.

I hadn't thought of the pseudonym usage. When I read about writers writing for that many hours a day without burning out, I marvel. It amazes me that someone can have such intense, overwhelming love for anything that they could put in such an enormous amount of time daily and not burn out. I write for 3 hours per day and at certain times, by the end of it, I feel like my eyes are going to fall out. But the old saying, "the less you do, the less you're able to do" really holds true. When I didn't push myself at all, even the thought of writing for a solid hour a day was too much, now 3 hours barely seems like enough.

Jamesaritchie · Mar 16, 2006

BuffStuff said:
Thanks for the quick reply, James.

I hadn't thought of the pseudonym usage. When I read about writers writing for that many hours a day without burning out, I marvel. It amazes me that someone can have such intense, overwhelming love for anything that they could put in such an enormous amount of time daily and not burn out. I write for 3 hours per day and at certain times, by the end of it, I feel like my eyes are going to fall out. But the old saying, "the less you do, the less you're able to do" really holds true. When I didn't push myself at all, even the thought of writing for a solid hour a day was too much, now 3 hours barely seems like enough.

Have you ever read Isaac Asimov's autobiography? There was a man who loved to write. The unusual thing about Asimov was that, other than his Paul French juveniles, he wrote everything, fiction (Primarily SF & mysteries), nonfiction, poetry, you name it, under his own name, so it's easier to see just how much a dedicated writer can produce.

Try reading the article about him on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov

This is a sentence from early in the article: Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 volumes and an estimated 90,000 letters or postcards, and he has works in every major category of the Dewey Decimal System except Philosophy.

BuffStuff · Mar 16, 2006

James,

I never read his autobiography, I did read his Robot series in college, though. I should read the Foundation trilogy, I'd been meaning to for ages now. He is probably THE most prolific writer ever, with the possible exception of Barbara Cartland for her fiction (she wrote more novel-length fiction, I believe). He had a wonderful ability to maintain a certain high level of quality despite his prolificity, which, I doubt will ever be matched (in terms of his fiction & non-fiction combined).

As an "Idea man" he was unmatched and he possessed very solid writing ability. At times when I'd read his fiction work (I haven't read a ton of his collection, admittedly) I always felt melancholy, because, as superlative an idea man as he was, his writing craft, at least in his fiction, never quite reached the level necessary to do his thoughts justice. Every thing I've read of his has been very enjoyable, no doubt, but I always wondered what it could have been had he had more skill in creating the characters necessary to really bring his ideas to life on the page.

I'd often wondered if, in his fiction, he tried to write complex characters and he simply couldn't. Or if the concepts necessary to create psychologically-complex characters bored him and he felt it wasn't worth the effort? Reading his work, I almost get the feeling that he grew bored with the project he was working on relatively quickly. I know that he revised very little. With his particular writing style, tons of revision wasn't necessary. Perhaps this was both a blessing and a curse for him when it came to realistic characters & life-like dialogue.

Shadow_Ferret · Mar 16, 2006

Sheesh. The only thing I have the energy or compulsion to do for 12 hours straight is sleep.

victoriastrauss · Mar 16, 2006

BuffStuff said:
If Author A: genuinely needs to spend 12+ hours per day to achieve a production of 1 book every 2-3 years, then, something is, most likely, wrong. Too much emphasis is placed on Volume for its own sake, at least in our society.

You seem to be assuming that all the time that writers describe as "writing time" is actually spent producing new prose. For many of us, big chunks of that time are spent revising, rewriting, looking things up, and thinking about what comes next.

- Victoria

BuffStuff · Mar 16, 2006

Victoria,

I know that researching, re-writing etc can take a large portion of writing time. In many cases, most of the actual work is in the researching and the outlining (historical fiction, for example, is dependent on enormous amounts of research, so it tends to take longer to write, at least to my guesstimation) but the theoretical example of an author spending 12+ hours per day for close to 2 years ( roughly 8,760 work-hours) in order to produce a single, average-length novel just boggles my mind.

In an interview I read online, Peter Straub (great writer) said that it takes him anywhere from 1-3 years to write a novel..I wish I could remember the exact details of the interview, but I remember that quote. It made my jaw hit the floor! Obviously, some writers are faster than others. I, myself, am a S-L-O-W writer. Thoughts can't be rushed, of course, and we all know examples of famous literary works that took their authors decades to complete. I've been known to be wrong in the past, but I can't see how it should take anyone that much of a time investment in total hours in order to write a single novel if he/she were working with anything approaching optimal efficiency. I'm not looking at this from a condescending viewpoint at all so it is appears that way, forgive me, but really, it just blows my mind that 5-700 pages...any 5-700 pages, could routinely take close to 9000 hours of worktime to create and get into submission-ready shape if the author was working in close to peak efficiency

victoriastrauss · Mar 17, 2006

BuffStuff said:
I'm not looking at this from a condescending viewpoint at all so it is appears that way, forgive me, but really, it just blows my mind that 5-700 pages...any 5-700 pages, could routinely take close to 9000 hours of worktime to create and get into submission-ready shape if the author was working in close to peak efficiency

What's peak efficiency for a writer? There are good days and bad days. There are days when you're on fire and days when each sentence is agony. There are days where nothing comes at all (but you sit in front of your computer anyway, because that's what it means to keep your butt in the chair). There are days when you throw out everything you did the week before. Heck, there are days where you throw out everything you did the month before.

My last novel was 835 pages in manuscript. It took me two and a half years to complete, including research, planning, and revision. I certainly don't work 12 hours every day, but I work most days of the week and most weeks of the year, and the time I put in ranges anywhere from one hour a day to ten. If you count thinking about the work--an important part of the process--or worrying about it--an inevitable part of the process--it's even more.

I know professional writers who can produce a novel of the same length in a year. There are some who could do it in six months. And some who take even longer than me.

There are commonalities to the process of writing a book, otherwise we'd have nothing to talk about on these message boards. Even so, each writer's own process is as individual as a snowflake.

- Victoria

Jamesaritchie · Mar 17, 2006

BuffStuff said:
James,

I never read his autobiography, I did read his Robot series in college, though. I should read the Foundation trilogy, I'd been meaning to for ages now. He is probably THE most prolific writer ever, with the possible exception of Barbara Cartland for her fiction (she wrote more novel-length fiction, I believe). He had a wonderful ability to maintain a certain high level of quality despite his prolificity, which, I doubt will ever be matched (in terms of his fiction & non-fiction combined).

As an "Idea man" he was unmatched and he possessed very solid writing ability. At times when I'd read his fiction work (I haven't read a ton of his collection, admittedly) I always felt melancholy, because, as superlative an idea man as he was, his writing craft, at least in his fiction, never quite reached the level necessary to do his thoughts justice. Every thing I've read of his has been very enjoyable, no doubt, but I always wondered what it could have been had he had more skill in creating the characters necessary to really bring his ideas to life on the page.

I'd often wondered if, in his fiction, he tried to write complex characters and he simply couldn't. Or if the concepts necessary to create psychologically-complex characters bored him and he felt it wasn't worth the effort? Reading his work, I almost get the feeling that he grew bored with the project he was working on relatively quickly. I know that he revised very little. With his particular writing style, tons of revision wasn't necessary. Perhaps this was both a blessing and a curse for him when it came to realistic characters & life-like dialogue.

Off teh subject, but his autobiography, all two, massive volumes of it, are worth reading. Especially volume one. It gives such a detail view of teh early science fiction world, of the Futurians, and of many othe rthings, that it's incredible.

I tend to agree with your assessment of Asimov's fiction. I found much of it pretty darned good on the first read because of the ideas and imagination, but there's almost none of it that I can read a second time.

I enjoyed The foundation Trilogy quite a bit on the first read, but I've tried to read it again since, and I just can't get interested.

But I've read his Autobigraphy, the real thing, "In Memory Yet green," and "In Joy Still felt," 708 pages of fairly small print and many footnotes, and 798 pages of fairly small print and many footnotes respectively, several times.

Personally, I enjoyed Asimov the person much more than I enjoyed his fiction, and his autobiograhy, once you get into it far enough for him to start writing, is fascinating. I think it gives the best view of the early science fiction world to be had.

jules · Mar 18, 2006

I don't think anyone else comes close to Barbara Cartland in terms of number of words published. She published an estimated 724 novels over a 77 year career, with one being published every 2 weeks at her peak. Examining a few that I have hanging around the house (don't ask!) suggests that they are fairly short on average, perhaps 40,000 words each. That's over 28 million published words, not including anything she wrote that wasn't a novel (according to wikipedia, she also wrote plays and for newspapers).

Hypographia-the uncontrollable urge to write

banjo

alaskamatt17

Mistook

Neverending WIP

BuffStuff

No more being nice to Pee D

Jamesaritchie

victoriastrauss

Writer Beware Goddess

TLHines

Avalon

Linda J. Daly

Josie

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester

Jamesaritchie

cwfgal

On the rocks

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester

BuffStuff

No more being nice to Pee D

Jamesaritchie

BuffStuff

No more being nice to Pee D

Jamesaritchie

BuffStuff

No more being nice to Pee D

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester

victoriastrauss

Writer Beware Goddess

BuffStuff

No more being nice to Pee D

victoriastrauss

Writer Beware Goddess

Jamesaritchie

jules

Bored fanatic