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| illustrated by N.C. Wyeth |
Robert Louis Stevenson gave us such classics as
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and
Treasure Island but he had a guilty secret. Stevenson felt that he did not actually write these books by himself, but rather, the stories were given to him by fairies. These would be the little people he called “Brownies.” Stevenson claimed the Brownies came to him in his sleep to give him story ideas, plots and narratives, and all he had to do when he woke up is write them down. Stevenson said:
The whole of my published fiction should be the single-minded product of some Brownie, some Familiar, some unseen collaborator, whom I keep locked up in the back of a garret ... the more I think of it, the more I am moved to press upon the world my question: Who are the Little People?
Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland.
more in this very interesting article, linked HERE
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2 comments:
Anthony Peake (who would be a great guest) has also written about this
http://www.anthonypeake.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=429&start=20
Kipling also claimed outside assistance
http://mywordlikefire.com/2013/08/13/rudyard-kipling-claimed-demon-helped-write-jungle-books/
Ditto on the Peake suggestion. Come on, Mike! End the Hidden Experience cold turkey :P
John Nash, mathematician who attained global fame thanks to the movie A Beautiful Mind, was diagnosed with schizophrenia --unlike the movie though, instead of visual hallucinations he experienced auditory ones (i.e. hearing voices). For a time he claimed to be in contact with aliens, and that they were the ones who were handing to him the mathematical formulas for which he later won the Nobel prize.
Eventually he was 'cured', but gone with the 'madness' was also his creativity. So I think there's a thing to say about the benefits of what we choose to call psychosis ;)
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