Before he became a romantic novelist, Chuck Palahniuk worked at Freightliner for 13 years, fitting front axles to big trucks, then writing manuals telling people how to do the same. For a while, too, he tried his hand at journalism. Both ‘closed him down’. A casual visit to a ‘group awareness’ seminar conducted by the Landmark Forum, an organisation that uses ideas based on controversial ‘est’ therapy, was, he says, his ‘big epiphany moment’.

‘I was 26 when I did the seminar, convinced the world was out to burn me at every turn. If it wasn’t for that seminar, I wouldn’t be a writer. They taught me to see how closed down I was, to face my fears.’

+ Chuck Palahniuk interviewed in the Guardian by Sean O’Hagan. When’s the Chuck Palahniuk movie? His is an awesome success story for the tarnished creatives of the world.