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Lee Kofman on Pushing Through Writers’ Block

There’s this really beautiful idea that writers need to clear the decks, go somewhere else in solitude, and then the writing will happen. And it often does, but I think it mostly does when we actually keep doing real practice. So says author Lee Kofman in her podcast with “The Garrett” at https://thegarretpodcast.com/lee-kofman-writing-honestly-reading-writer/ In January 2022 I was lucky enough to […]

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Readers’ Feedback

I am always happy to receive feedback from my readers, whether positive or otherwise, provided it’s honest and respectful. Here are some of the many responses I’ve had from the “chat” form on my website. If you have anything to say about either of my books, or any of my articles, I’d be delighted to hear from you. SImply go […]

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A Story from a Resident of Ukraine

Several weeks ago, in the early days of the War in Ukraine, a friend contacted me. She had received a piece of writing from her contact in besieged Ukraine. Would I consider using my editing skills to enhance the author’s version written in rather broken English? With the author’s agreement, I agreed to undertake this task, gratis of course, in […]

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Creativity and Mental Illness: Sigmund Freud and Sylvia Plath

I have long been interested in the connection between mental illness and creativity. My latest novel, A Dangerous Daughter, describes how psychoanalysis was used to cure a mental illness and to unlock the main character’s creativity. Some of our greatest artists, writers and musicians suffered some form of mental illness while producing brilliant and lasting works of art. Many of the 20th century’s great writers, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Schumann,Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald, and William Styron, suffered from mental illness.  In this article by Jahnavi Ravishankar “Sylvia Plath– A Caged Darkness of the Mind”, the writer extrapolates how Freud, the Father of Psychoanalysis, might have analysed the poet and author Sylvia Plath, who suffered what would now be called a bipolar condition, and made several suicide attempts before succeeding in 1963. In this abridged version, Ravishankar analyses Plath’s famous poem, ‘Daddy” in Freudian terms (see poem attached): .“Sylvia Plath, a renowned American poet, was clinically depressed for most of her life and eventually became a victim of suicide at the age of Bnb thirty. The “Ariel” poems, including ‘I am Vertical and ‘Daddy’, were written shortly before she died. and posthumously garnered acclaim. These poems painted a vivid image of her inner psyche. Sigmund Freud’s position that the artist is a successful neurotic has been contested but, at the same time, has served as a key focal point for several psychoanalytic theories in literature. In his essay, ‘Creative Writers and Daydreaming’, he states, “The […]

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