How to distinguish a talented writer from a graphomaniac. Graphomania
Wikipedia gives us the following definition of graphomania: “Graphomania (from the Greek γρα φω - to write, draw, depict, and the Greek μανια - passion, madness, attraction) is a pathological desire to compose works that apply for publication in literary publications, pseudoscientific treatises and etc. Graphomaniac tendencies are not uncommon among litigious psychopaths.”
“Graphomania is a psychiatric term that implies a morbid passion for writing texts that most often do not represent any cultural value. Typically, the works of such authors are formulaic, inexpressive and of no interest to either readers or critics. Like any similar disease, graphomania can have a more or less severe form.
Similar to other diagnoses in this area, graphomania does not arise out of nowhere and, in principle, is treatable, including medication.
How does a person become a graphomaniac? On paper we express our feelings, emotions and experiences, sometimes we keep diaries with whom we share painful things, in poetry we express delight or sorrow, love or hatred. However, in most cases, a person has many interlocutors other than a piece of paper. But the graphomaniac does not. Initially lonely, perhaps suffering from low self-esteem or the inability to have a heart-to-heart conversation with someone, he begins to write. His creations are part of his painful and lonely world. The more he creates them, the less he consciously strives for live communication. However, limiting oneself in contacts, a graphomaniac must realize the natural craving for communication; this is inherent in the individual on a subconscious level. And again his hand reaches for a sheet of paper.
One can only feel sorry for such a person. His works seem brilliant to him, moreover, he completely sincerely believes in it. Like any psychiatric patient, he cannot discern signs of illness in himself and cannot objectively assess his lifestyle. That is why graphomaniacs are extremely sensitive to critical statements regarding their work.
For most authors, the opinion of their audience is an incentive for development, as well as the main source of information about the shortcomings of their works. People suffering from a painful craving for writing are deprived of this, which means they do not have the opportunity to develop and improve. The result is works devoid of any literary and spiritual value, monotonous and unoriginal.
Over time, all contacts with the outside world are reduced for the graphomaniac to demonstrating his creations. A external world, precisely for this reason, begins to avoid him.
However, what is described is a severe case of the disease.
In a mild form, graphomania may be associated with certain temporary conditions. For example, a loved one is away, and writing is in this case — The best way take your mind off the worries associated with it. After the return of the object of desire, everything returns to normal, and the symptoms of graphomania go away on their own.
You can help a graphomaniac. If you distract him from pen and paper, offer other entertainment and interests, it is possible that with regular contact with someone, over time he will give up the idea of creativity. However, in the case of a severe form of the disease, specialist intervention will be required, otherwise, as with any other similar disease, the consequences of unskilled exposure can be fatal.”
When approaching publishers, editors, and literary agents, graphomaniacs experience a difficult and painful experience even polite refusals and try to offend the person who refused publication as painfully as possible. Sometimes they write insulting letters for years, although this is rare.
A graphomaniac is incapable of accepting criticism and demands that his works be published verbatim, without editing. When publishing at their own expense (small printing houses willingly fulfill such orders), books come out, but then the next blow awaits the graphomaniac: similar folios or brochures bookstores and book dealers practically don’t charge. There is still no access to a wide market, fame, glory, honor and money. If a writer asks the question “Am I a graphomaniac?”, it means that all is not lost and the chance for a successful outcome is very high.
The literary institute, for example, is good because it teaches you to criticize others and accept criticism towards yourself, edit works, polish them, and sometimes redo them many, many times.
The line between a writer and a graphomaniac can be very thin, since both of them can be mentally unbalanced. It's just this imbalance of different nature and etiology.
And if a real artist (I repeat), waking up from his creative oblivion, sometimes cannot believe that his words, thoughts, feelings, brush strokes are imprinted on this sheet of paper or canvas, then the graphomaniac understands perfectly well that these wonderful the words that form phrases were written by him and no one else. Nothing transcendental.
If an artist is characterized by a continuous need to surpass himself, to do better, to write better, to comprehend in a different way certain events, characters, actions, in order to realize all facets of his personality, everything that is hidden in the embryo is initially hidden in the soul, genes etc., the ability to learn, to comprehend life and events in a new way, to constantly discover something new, not to rabidly deny some things without first studying them, the ability to temporarily mimic, change views and attitudes, the ability to work enormously hard and study required material With different sides, then the graphomaniac cares about these empyreans, excuse the rudeness, - he doesn’t care. No ability to learn, no desire to surpass himself exists for him. On the contrary, a graphomaniac is initially confident in the genius of his texts, in the fact that he is being squeezed, and all awards are given exclusively through connections and for a lot of money (bed). Jealous not of the muse, but of benefits and honor, the graphomaniac painfully strives to get both, despite the fact that his text may be full of not only clichés, but also a huge amount spelling errors.
If you are a beginning writer, don’t be lazy, study the spelling rules, take Rosenthal’s collection (“Handbook of Spelling and Literary Editing”), or, at worst, give the text to an editor, proofreader, or Russian language teacher at school. Honestly, these services are not that expensive, but it is quite possible that this step will be the first on the path to publishing your text.
It seems to me that a writer is a person who can write a beautiful, coherent text, and at the same time he writes it for someone. A writer may love his work, but he may not love it.
A graphomaniac is a person who has a pathological passion for writing. At the same time, he is interested in the process of writing the work itself, and the result - to a lesser extent. But the result obtained may not always be good.
But under certain conditions, a writer can be a graphomaniac, and a gifted graphomaniac can be a writer.
A graphomaniac is a lover of writing. And it doesn’t matter to him what he scribbled on the pages, the main thing for him is the volume of what he wrote, so that he can then tell everyone - Wow, how much I wrote! Do you see how thick the Talmud is?
A writer is a person who professionally writes literary works.
A graphomaniac is a person who believes that he has created or is creating a masterpiece, but it seems to people that this is an incomprehensible jumble of words. This is a person who has a morbid penchant for writing texts.
It is these people who bombard large publishing houses with their works, insisting on publication and will most likely publish their book, but at their own expense.
Quite often the graphomaniac is not a mediocrity and foolish man, he may be very well educated and writing books is not at all his main job. As a rule, graphomaniacs do not have an audience and they are not interesting even to a small circle of readers; they remain alone and this can only further intensify their painful state.
A writer is always a graphomaniac. But what distinguishes an ordinary writer from a graphomaniac is that the writer knows for sure that he has graphomania and tries with all his might to hide his illness from others. Therefore, the writer is constantly improving, developing a sense of taste and proportion, working very painstakingly on texts and is never satisfied with his works. But an ordinary graphomaniac writes only from inspiration. Moreover, inspiration is his constant state. It never leaves him. The graphomaniac gives the world his masterpieces without worrying too much about quality. A graphomaniac is sure that God guided his hand at the moment of writing the text, and therefore he never makes corrections to an already written text.
Simply put, a graphomaniac is a mediocrity from the field of literature who thinks that he great writer. Actually, this is where he differs from a real writer; everything he writes is uninteresting and tiring to read.
The word graphomania itself contains the answer to your question. Grapho - write, mania - passion. Therefore, graphomania is a passionate desire to write. According to the original meaning, this is exactly so, but over time this word acquired a contemptuous connotation in relation to incompetent people who write a lot. And sometimes not even those who write a lot, but simply those who are mediocre.
If you wrote a text, sold it, and paid for utilities with this money, then you are a writer. If you just write on the table, then you are a graphomaniac.
It happens to every person in life, you read the text, read, read and just don’t understand why it was written? and suddenly you realize that you have wasted your 20 minutes of life, in fact this is graphomania, a wall of meaningless and unnecessary text that could be summarized in 3-4 sentences, so the people who write this are graphomaniacs.
Graphomania, simply put, is a pathological desire for vanity. More specifically, it is a craving for writing any works. There is also erotographomania, which is a passion for writing love letters.
The fact is that the first is recognized, but the second is not.
I once read a whole list of those writers and poets who were considered graphomaniacs in their time, and there were such names! The names of those whom we now consider almost geniuses.
If I’m not mistaken, many scientists were not recognized at one time and were ridiculed.
For there is no prophet in his own country. A what concerns art in general is relative.
Not every poet, writer or artist was recognized during his lifetime. Many of them eked out a miserable existence as graphomaniac losers and died in poverty. And only then did descendants begin to realize who lived and worked many years ago.
I think that graphomaniacs and paper scribblers are those whose works are persistently promoted, driving into consciousness an understanding of their genius. And it doesn’t matter that their creation is artificially popularized: such people are always a reason for snobs to exchange remarks.
A graphomaniac differs from a writer in that he cannot help but write, since he is obsessed with this mania and no arguments can convince him, no hard evidence complete absence There is no point in continuing his work, not to force him to stifle this unbridled desire to throw out the indigestible contents of his brain on paper/monitor. They can only be cured using the method indicated in the bottom picture.
Here on the project there are several graphomaniacs who write comments and answers in poetry, these masterpieces of literature are very difficult to read and perceive, because - well, they can’t do it, it’s not possible, but they can’t stop. I feel sorry for the people, of course.
Real writers or poets improve throughout their lives, taking breaks in their creativity to get inspired, to take stock of the work done, that is, to constantly analyze their creative potential and stop writing, noticing the hackwork behind them.
Thanks to them for this.
In short: lack of talent. A graphomaniac believes that the ability to put letters into words, words into sentences, and sentences into coherent text is already enough to be a writer.
In addition, there is such a mental illness, it is characterized by a painful craving for written expression; usually it is also accompanied by schizophagia.
To put it in detail, a graphomaniac, most often, is a person who has read a lot of books and feels some kind of dissatisfaction - like an avid gamer wants to write a game where you can rob the Korovans and play for the guard of the bad elves (c).
Usually the result is the same as for a gamer.
Only the graphomaniac is worse - you don’t need much to scribble the text; at the same time, those around him will praise him (and if he posts his texts on a hotbed of this infection like samizdat.ru, then he can only be stopped with a flamethrower) and he will continue his attempts, not paying attention to the fact that he uses a language that is strange for the time, anachronisms, cultural mismatch...
Usually graphomaniacs start with fantasy or (if women) with women's novels, thinking that it is very easy. Forgetting (or not knowing) that the founder of fantasy, philologist John Tolkien said: It is very easy to come up with a world where the sky is green and the grass is blue. It’s extremely difficult to come up with a world where this would be organic.
The graphomaniac does not care about correspondences; The graphomaniac’s language is very sparse and extremely similar to ordinary conversational language (at best - to the language of the script) - by the way, and, often, the narration is conducted in the first person, the graphomaniac’s texts are extremely secondary, although in some ways he tries to be original (apparently he feels that his writings are a processed product - like food after passing through gastrointestinal tract) and mask this smell. The end result is even worse.
An example of the wildest graphomania, offhand, is the series Nick by Andrzej Jasinski. All the signs are there.
Here is the opinion of one literary critic(via the link - https://ridero.ru/books/kak_voiti_v_literaturnoe_soobshestvo/read#textpreview):
"What do you think about graphomaniacs?
You know, it generally seems to me that the traditional opposition between graphomania and quality literature is incorrect. A graphomaniac is a person who enjoys writing and writes a lot. And a quality writer is a writer who writes well. Do we know writers who wrote a lot and well? Yes! For example, Leo Tolstoy, Balzac, Dumas, Jules Verne. Do we know writers who were not graphomaniacs and were good writers? Well, yes: Dostoevsky was not a graphomaniac, he wrote so hard that he preferred to dictate novels, because he could dictate quickly and write slowly. Who finds it easier to be a writer - a graphomaniac or a non-graphomaniac? Grafomaniac! Does this mean that every graphomaniac has a chance of becoming a quality writer? No! This requires talent, this requires a critical attitude towards your own text - the ability to reread it, improve it, this requires writerly courage."
It is clear that this is a pressing issue for me for a specific reason - when I learned on E-he about the samizdat service, I was able to publish the books that I wrote on the table (5 pieces). But I didn’t stop there - since December 2015, I have published more than 35 books, that is, about 5 books a month, of course, some are thin (for example, two fairy tales), some are thin (Russian Management Magazine in book version), but decently books 200 - 400 pages, despite the fact that he launched a number of book projects (the largest is a series of 60 books, 12 of which have already been published).
Comments
1 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 0The question contains the incorrect, in my opinion, premise that a graphomaniac is necessarily a bad writer. Graphomania is a (morbid) passion for the very process of writing, so to speak, for literary work. She met and very good writers, for example, Thomas Wolfe (who “Look homeward, angel”, and not the writer of the 70s) was an obvious graphomaniac, and apparently L.N. Tolstoy too. That is, it happens that a completely excellent writer is maddened by the very process of writing a text. The “musical graphomaniac” was D.D. Shostakovich: he suffered when there was nothing to write, he composed almost continuously.
The question is rather how much this author will then be able to think critically about his text. But even non-graphomaniacs often have problems with this. A large (and maybe more) number of bad writers are graphomaniacs, but this happens for the simple reason that it is easier for a non-graphomaniac to refuse literary activity, if nothing good comes of it.
The difference between a graphomaniac and a “non-graphomaniac” lies in the amount of pleasure received from the process of writing a text. It’s difficult to find out about this unless he tells you himself. A large number of texts written in a short period of time may indirectly indicate graphomania. For example, Dmitry Bykov, I suspect, is a graphomaniac. I will not judge the quality of his texts.
Until now, I was sure that graphomania is a passion for writing on walls, and only later among literary consultants and editors of publishing houses this word began to mean persistent mediocrities. However, dictionaries refute me (). But the use of the word “graphomaniac” to mean “aggressive mediocrity” is also common. For example, in “When I Was a Mermaid” by Shefner (): “I swore to him that there would be no undermining on my part. Destroyer
I calmed down and, taking a crumpled piece of paper out of my pocket, handed it to me.
Take it and follow it! I have compiled a list of the most dangerous authors.
Know that for hundreds of normal, modest people visiting the editorial office,
there are about five to ten aggressive graphomaniacs. Be afraid of them!.. Well,
I have to go to the station.
Before, I had never even thought that the work of a literary consultant involved
danger. I have been here several times, but there have been no incidents with me
happened. True, out of respect for my creativity, the Destroyer never
did not delay for long and let us through out of turn.
I unfolded the piece of paper. It was scribbled hastily and not in blue ink.
quite coherently:
Who to watch out for:
1) An old man with a stick. Odes and elegies. Listen while standing! He promised to use it!
2) Brunette with an album. Intimate lyrics. Listen carefully! Spit on
3) A man with a tattoo. Flimsy but dangerous! Poems about fatal childhood.