Down the Hatch, Over the Counter, Under the Knife

How writers write seems to be an endlessly fascinating subject (at least for writers). Recently, Olivia Laing has been getting good reviews for The Trip To Echo Spring, a book about famous writers who found inspiration in the bottle. A few years ago, I interviewed the British Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, about his whimsical variation on that approach. He admitted that since he felt he wrote better poetry when he was miserable, e.g. suffering through a cold, he would take Lemsip (a British Theraflu) to fool himself into feeling as if he really was sick, and write away.