I find poets are the most “at risk” group of writers… but there’s certainly the booze ‘n’ alcohol-fuelled writer cliché, where everyone feels a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle is going to make their writing better. Anyone who idolizes men like Bukowski, Kerouac, Hemingway believes in the self-destructive writer type. It frustrates me that this is seen as the dominant idea of what writers should be like. Either that or the mystical genius who is just so talented that they can do no wrong.

See what Elizabeth Gilbert has to say about the death toll of creative types over the past 500 years. It’s a moving, and perspective-changing talk.