I’m not sure where I’m going right now, but I’m writing a mystery with a dark side from the point-of-view of an upbeat, even sunny, voice. The narrator is simply a breezy person, able to quickly assess the people she encounters and self-conscious enough to monitor her own responses without the mean streak associated with such narrators. She doesn’t seem to have a dark side! The more I write in her voice, the more the darkness tickles at the corners of the story but it does not spring from her, generally happy, lips.             What am I doing? Am I
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The Curse of the Crazy Genius? This is an old trope that resurfaces in various incarnations. It’s the absolute certainty that’s expressed this way: “Of course he’s crazy he’s a genius.” It’s an assumption that high intelligence or extraordinary talent comes with the burden of insanity and sometimes it presupposes superior insights in people coping with mental illness. There’s a difference between causality and convergence and the gap gets papered over in familiar stereotypes. The connection is often made with a lack of facts and a big dollop of: “You can’t have it all. Aren’t you glad you’re normal and
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