"Yes, I get that," I said, "but what's so—"
"Did you ever hit your thumb with a hammer?" the doctor with the traditional, gray goatee interrupted.
"Sure, a couple of times."
"Ever lose a sweetheart or have a loved one die?"
I nodded.
"Suppose that to even think about such experiences you had to endure all the actual physical or emotional pain of the original incident? The crushing blow of the hammer? The heartache and tears of your loss? And suppose further, that you were trying to write a play, and in order to bring genuine emotion to it you forced yourself to endure these pains and emotional stresses, minute after minute—"
"God!" I said. "But you said he'd recover?"
"In a few weeks, yes. Gradually we will reduce sedation until he can control his memories again, but never ask him to write another dramatic work. Another attack like this one could drive him irretrievably insane."
It wasn't too hard to understand. After all, what is creative writing but setting down little bits of yourself? And the demands of literature are for human problems, conflicts, struggles.
Young as he was, Hillary was no different from the rest of us. Sure, he was full of reading and second hand bits of business, but he dug deeply into his own private pot of pain for his genuine dramatic effects. And where others dig with a long-handled ladle, Hillary dipped with his bare soul—and he got scalded.