In todays news: This word could kill you. Tonight at 10.

(it’s only 6:25 but I’m impatient.)

Your Word of the Year. That’s right. Not your word of the day or even of  the month. In fact, let’s make this, the word of a lifetime. I’d like to extend the suspense as long as possible, so first let’s have a word from our sponsors.

Okay, enough of that. Here is your word of the (choose your temporal preference).

Ever thought maybe you were sick? Not flu-sick.  Like, sick in the head-sick. Well, good news. You probably are. Here’s your diagnosis:

Hyperglyphia.

The overpowering, inexplicable, and often uncontrollable desire to write.

Here are the necessary conditions for diagnosis:

1. Masses of notebooks or paper with your scrawling all over it. The accumulation will vary in quantity depending on age (and depending on whether or not you burn any of it) but it should be considerable.

2. There must be no external incentives to produce above mass of writing. Read: no money. Maybe it’s a side-effect. But it must be created to satisfy the need to write, express, communicate, etc. Not to pay a water bill.

3. Much of the writing may be rambling, inconsistent, false, flowery, philosophical or entirely self-absorbed. But it should be more or less coherent. Likely there will be repeated words or letters and/or an attention to handwriting or stylistic appearance.

4. The writing doesn’t have to be any good.