Bearing-Gould, a compulsive writer, was a man of Victorian delicacy.

"He was a compulsive writer," Professor Smith said.

Always a compulsive writer, she has lived for many years in the northwest of the United Kingdom where she started her career writing short stories and articles.

He seems to have worked all day and through most of the night, and was a compulsive writer.

In "In Memory Yet Green," the first volume of his autobiography, published in 1979, he explained how he became a compulsive writer.

Such compulsive writers channel into writing emotions that would otherwise be expressed sexually, Wilson argues.

Robert Graves, her lover and collaborator (and another compulsive writer), viewed her as his muse, loving her "beyond anything thinkable."

Described as a "compulsive writer," Gibson is estimated to have written, at his peak output, 1,680,000 words a year and at least 282 of the 325 Shadow novels.

Yet, as a child, she was a natural, even compulsive writer, 'making up' incessantly - a solitary, ritualistic, obsessive activity.

"I'm a compulsive writer," she said.