Deb­bie Ja­cob

The shock­ing death of Amer­i­can co­me­di­an Robin Williams last week made me think about just how much we take cre­ative peo­ple for grant­ed, in­clud­ing writ­ers. It's al­most im­pos­si­ble to vi­su­alise the pain that writ­ers go through as they strug­gle to per­fect their craft.

I'm not talk­ing about great au­thors who had prob­lems be­cause they abused al­co­hol like Ray­mond Chan­dler, Edgar Allen Poe, Ten­nessee Williams, William Faulkn­er, F Scott Fitzger­ald, Ernest Hem­ing­way or James Joyce. There are many writ­ers who man­aged to per­se­vere through un­be­liev­able pain.

Here are some of my favourite writ­ers who fought such pain:

1. Mar­garet Mitchell: She wrote the great, Amer­i­can mod­ern clas­sic, a mon­u­men­tal tale of the old south swept away by the Civ­il War. Mar­garet Mitchell's Gone with the Wind re­mains one of the best-sell­ing Amer­i­can nov­els of all times. The spell­bind­ing his­tor­i­cal and ro­mance nov­el cap­tures the demise of the south dur­ing the Amer­i­can Civ­il War.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers