In February 1963, Esquire published “Ten Thousand Words a Minute” by Norman Mailer. Ostensibly a piece about the Sonny Liston–Floyd Patterson heavyweight fight in Chicago, Mailer as usual flailed all over the place, subject-wise, from the Mafia to America and back again.

Along the way, he delivered this:

Writing is of use to the psyche only if the writer discovers something he did not know he knew in the act itself of writing. That is why a few men will go through hell in order to keep writing—Joyce and Proust, for example. Being a writer can save one from insanity or cancer; being a bad writer can drive one smack into the center of the plague.

Mailer’s medical advice does not seem entirely sound. However, his declaration that writing is only worthwhile to the writer if it results in them learning something new is absolutely correct.

Why else bother?