What happens to a writer’s creative output when he or she takes anti-depressants? It’s a myth that treatment harms creativity, according to numerous poets and other creative artists, as well as those who treat them.

Richard M. Berlin, M.D., is a psychiatrist whose book of poems, How JFK Killed My Father, won the Pearl Poetry Prize in 2002, and whose poetry appears monthly in Psychiatric Times. 

Every piece of writing advice you’ve been taught could be wrong – for you.

Always think of such rules as mere suggestions, knowing that the opposite of each one may be even more worthy.

When I interviewed 76 successful novelists and poets, I discovered how silly some of the usual instructions can be.  My advice, then, is that you seriously consider avoiding the following 8 types of advice:

Sooner or later, all real writers somehow find their own way to create a writer’s life.  Changing circumstances and different priorities will always have to be adapted to.  Still, if writing is your passion and you want it to be more than a mere hobby or subset of your life, it’s useful to reflect on the thoughts of those who have gone before.

In this post and others to come, I’ll share both practical and more philosophical ideas on the subject of making writing your life (though certainly not all of your life).

We usually think of obsessions as negative. A lot of obsessing comes with pain, overwhelming frustration, and a sense that there’s nothing you can do about the source of your obsession.  There’s another kind of obsession, though, and those more productive obsessions are what we learn about in Brainstorm: Harnessing the Power of Productive Obsessions by psychotherapist and creativity coach Eric Maisel, Ph.D., and Ann Maisel.

Writers and other artists are often desperate for fresh inspiration and renewed motivation.  By learning concrete ways to tap into the brain’s potential, Maisel’s readers can better move forward in whatever realm they care most passionately about.  What the Maisels are talking about here is another way to look at flow, or focus, or deep engagement, or mindfulness.  Even if they’re not all defined as precisely the same experience, there’s no particular need to pull apart the threads of difference.  They’re all extremely positive states of mind, ones that creative people often crave and benefit from.

A friend of mine told her then-husband that she was finally going to start her novel.  He folded his arms, scowled and asked with palpable cynicism and disgust, “Do you have an outline?”

“Geeze, no,” she replied, “but Stephen King says in his book that outlines are completely unnecessary–just start writing.” According to my friend, that temporarily took the wind out of her ex’s know-it-all sails.

What, then, is the truth about outlines?  Do they serve a purpose or are they only dreary reminders of long-ago school days when we had to outline material we didn’t care about?

If you were to do an efficiency analysis of my movements during a typical at-home writing day, you’d end up with a surprising criss-crossing maze.  Not enough walking to use very many calories, but enough to show my typical style is not to sit and write steadily.