Lit agent Nathan Bransford posited an interesting question on his blog: "When is writing unhealthy?

If writing makes you miserable, it's time to take a break from it, whether a short sabbatical or permanently abandoning the pen. However, asking writers to evaluate their own mental health is like asking the emperor to show you his new duds. Here are two takes on compulsory writing:

Listen to an NPR podcast about hypergraphia by the author of "The Midnight Disease."

From the Electronic Book Review:
"Kundera has the perfect term for this sort of writing - Graphomania. As Kundera describes it, graphomania is not "the mania to create a form," that is, not a mania to create challenging new aesthetic forms and media, but rather a mania "to impose one's self on others" through already established modes of "received ideas" and pervasive non-thought [ idées reçues  ]. Graphomania reflects a singular neurosis common to modernity: namely, the need to have an audience, "a public audience of unknown readers." Graphomaniacs aspire to make stories out of their lives and thus presume to do a lot of people good. Writing four love letters a day is not graphomania; xeroxing your love letters so that they may be published one day is."
Read the complete article