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On Litopia After Dark this week:- Our special guest is Dr Susan O’Doherty, writer and clinical psychologist. The writers workspace - how to maximise creativity. Literary giant Gore Vidal is on his last tour of Europe - who are the 21st Century Literary Legends? And, age ranging in children’s books - for or against?

The Doctor is in! Litopia After Dark this week takes on the role of Public Service Broadcasting. The life of a writer is often lonely, exhausting and intense; trapped in a world of introspection and solitude. History has shown writers are often more likely to suffer from mood disorders and in extreme cases may even take their own lives - Hemingway, Woolfe and Plath for instance.

But help is at hand. Our very special guest this week is Dr Susan O’Doherty, writer, clinical psychologist and certified hypnotherapist, with a private practice in Brooklyn Heights, New York. Her focus is developing and enhancing creativity. Most of her clients are writers, musicians, and visual or performing artists. So, sit back, relax and listen to the secrets of how to deal with the stress of the writing life and unblock that creative flow.

The Ustream chatroom (Friday 7.30pm GMT) was chilled and laid back this week as we were hypnotised into a place of deep serenity. If you drop in next week, please tiptoe and used hushed voices - we may still be in the zone.

Links mentioned in the show…

David Franz in The New Atlantis…

Few arenas can match the business office for its combination of humdrummery and world-shaping influence. Sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote of office workers, “Whatever history they have had is a history without events.” The history of office technology seems especially uninspiring: the invention of double-entry bookkeeping, calculators, and spreadsheets are unlikely material for a captivating History Channel feature, to be sure. Yet the importance of the business office and its techniques is undeniable. Max Weber saw the office’s methods of organization, its rationality, and its disciplines as hallmarks of modern capitalism, making possible dramatic gains in efficiency and forever altering the economic and cultural landscape. Perhaps even more significant in our time, when millions of American workers spend most of their waking day in an office, is the sense that the organizational technologies of office life provide a kind of moral education, that offices shape character, that they create a certain kind of person. And perhaps no aspect of today’s office is more symbolic of office life and office lives than the cubicle.

Robert Chalmers in The Independent…

Seventeen years have passed, I remind Gore Vidal, since he told a reporter: “This is the last interview I shall ever give. I am in the departure lounge of life.” “So where are you now? Tray table in the upright position, footrest stowed, taxiing towards the runway?”

The writer gives me a mutinous look. “How do you know that I didn’t leave? Actually, I’m more fearful of airplanes than I am of my own mechanism, because I know how to run it.

I’ve had diabetes for 20 years. I have a titanium knee. Which is quite strong. But don’t ask for it in the middle of the night.”

With Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller and Norman Mailer gone, Gore Vidal, 82, is the last truly legendary figure from a golden age of American literature. “Serene” is his favourite word, though this is an adjective he employs rather than evokes: headlines he has inspired include “Into The Lion’s Den” and “Cross Him If You Dare”. That said, he looks tranquil enough this afternoon, an elderly ginger cat dozing on his knee, and a half-finished tumbler of whisky by his side. The expression he wears in photographs from his prime – a curious mixture of disdain and sensuality – has not altogether faded.

Graeme Neil in The Bookseller…

The Society of Authors is to meet with the Publishers’ Association’s Children’s Book Group to discuss this week’s unprecedented author rebellion over age guidance. But publishers said today (Wednesday, 4th June) that the author rebellion would not change their plans.

Elaine McQuade, m.d. of Scholastic Children’s Books and chair the Publishers’ Association’s Children’s Book Group (CBG), said she would be talking to concerned authors, and showing them the research that drove the decision. “Quite a few publishers have embarked on consultation with authors and have had little negative response,” she said. “Publishers like Random House, Penguin and OUP are well ahead [in rolling out age guided books] and they haven’t had much bad reaction.”

Dr Susan O’Doherty can be found at her Website and also in her weekly column on MJ Rose’s blog Buzz, Balls and Hype

Tags: getting published