Past Co-President of BSNNP
What does a past Co-President of the Boston Society of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry do with her new-found extra time? Well, write about the brain, of course!
In May, I launched a weekly newsletter on Substack with a good friend, Elizabeth Roper Marcus. The newsletter is called, “Two Friends Talk About Writing and the Brain.” Here’s how it came about.
Elizabeth approached me with curiosity about what she described as “a personal transformation” that resulted from having written a memoir about her parents’ declines in old age. Elizabeth first trained and worked as an architect but is now an essayist and author of the memoir “Don’t Say a Word!” To Elizabeth’s astonishment, the writing and publishing of her book had silenced an inner, self-critical voice she had lived with until then, even after years of psychotherapy with excellent psychiatrists. Also, during the writing process she had three “ah-ha” experiences that were accompanied by powerful physiologic and sensory changes. She called me, thinking I might be able to shed some light on these happenings.
Right away we became intensely engaged in the kind of conversation that makes time disappear. Both of us gravitate to thinking about writing, so it was not surprising that ideas emerged in a flood.
Elizabeth is courageously open about her inner experiences, including what goes on in her mind when she’s writing. Her personal revelations became material for us to reflect upon, almost as a case study. She was fascinated when I tried to illuminate some of her experiences by introducing concepts about brain functioning — ideas that are fundamental to those of us in the neuropsychiatry world. She thought others also would be excited to learn about modern neuroscientific thinking in relation to writing and other forms of creativity.
Could we write a book together about all of this?
We started by using otter.ai to record and transcribe our conversations over, perhaps, 25 hours. Then began the tedious work of organizing this voluminous amount of material. Many related but diverse themes emerged, and that’s when we decided to tackle specific topics, one by one, in short conversations in a newsletter.
“Two Friends Talk About Writing and the Brain” has been a lot of work and a lot of fun. Before this new venture, I had collaborated in producing academic manuscripts, but this experience has been different. We write in dialogue form, and first drafts are based on our actual conversations. When we edit, Elizabeth and I have similar sensibilities about language, so working jointly on a google drive document can have the fluidity of verbal dancing. Also, we’ve learned how to best utilize our differing personal strengths. Elizabeth is especially good at creating and keeping to a clear narrative line. When we get stuck, I am quicker to look for an altogether new strategy to solve the problem. And I’ve been producing most of the images for the newsletter, using artificial intelligence — an entirely new creative endeavor. It takes two to tango.
Actually, it takes more than two. We owe much to writers and artists in other media who have written about the process of creating something out of nothing. Recently, we posted a series of discussions about writer’s block: how we think of it; why we believe it is so misunderstood; how it relates to problem-solving, and so on. On this topic we are indebted to Dr. Alice W. Flaherty whose excellent book about writing has provided inspiration — “The Midnight Disease: the drive to write, writer’s block, and the creative brain.”
I have been learning a lot from this writing adventure. I have gained a new level of respect for writers who work for a living and must produce on a rigid schedule. I’ve discovered how much of my knowledge of the brain and behavior I take for granted. Perhaps the greatest challenge for me has been to describe ideas from neuropsychiatry in a way that is accessible to a lay audience. Since Elizabeth sees herself as a science-phobe, she is the lay audience and, therefore, a superb sounding board. Sometimes, ideas that seem basic to me are grand revelations to Elizabeth, opening altogether new ways of seeing herself and the world. This has given me renewed appreciation for the critical role of science journalism in educating the public.
I’ve also found that writing about writing is like hiking to the top of the hill and then seeing that many more hills lay ahead. Writing is about language, imagination, creativity, problem-solving, inner dialogue, complex motives, and more. Alone at the computer, in conversation only with oneself, writers focus on thoughts and feelings as they emerge into awareness. We struggle to put these edge-of-consciousness ideas into words — words that will convey what we discover we wanted to say all along.
“Two Friends Talk About Writing and the Brain” can be found on Substack. https://elizabethropermarcus.substack.com/about
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