9 out of 10 Writers Have Hypergraphia. Do You?

[This week, I’m re-running one of my most popular posts from 2015. Enjoy!]

Hypergraphia (a rarely-used noun) means, “the overwhelming desire to write”.

Do you have hypergraphia?

Writing can lead to all sorts of unpleasant conditions. Some writers have graphomania, a manic obsession to write. Others are so obsessed with writing that they practice epeolatry: The worship of words.

If you procrastinate, you are a cunctator, one who puts something off. And if you practice cunctation and put off a writing project long enough, you could end up with uhtceare (pronounced: oot-key-are-a; an Old English noun meaning “lying awake before dawn and worrying.”)

Cunctation also leads to shturmovshchina, a word of Russian origin that means the practice of working frantically just before a deadline.

And shturmovshchina often leads to mogigraphia, a rare word meaning “writer’s cramp”. If you have mogigraphia, you might also have dysgraphia, a problem whereby one finds it hard to write legibly. (Agatha Christie had this, and I do, too.)

Cunctation, shturmovshchina, mogigraphia, and dysgraphia can lead to graphophobia, which means, “a fear of writing.” And if you are afraid of using long words, or even reading them, then you have hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia. (There’s even a song about it! Click here to listen.)

If your brain overflows with ideas and your muse leads you to dream about monsters, you could end up with teratophobia, the fear of giving birth to monsters. . .

and that might lead to ideophobia, a fear of ideas. . .

and—HORRORS!—

this blog post may have given you logophobia—a fear of words!

And you thought writing was easy?

Most of these words come from one of my favorite web sites, Interesting Literature. Check it out. I promise, you won’t be disappointed.

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