The best way to get paid for being insane

Blazing Reader,

Last year, at a Simon & Schuster centennial event, Swedish novelist Federik Backmann gave a speech in which he confessed that:

"I spend eight hours every day locked up in a room with people I made up.... Being a writer is the best way I know to get paid for being insane."

His four-minute speech has the audience laughing after almost every sentence as he explains:

• Why he never suffers from creative anxiety — only death anxiety and (when he's in a rush) panic attacks
• The difference between Swedish and American depression
• How procrastination prevents writer's block

For a humourous dive into the psyche of a novelist, check out Backmann's four-minute speech on the Simon & Schuster YouTube channel.

John C.A. Manley

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.