I'm coming at this from an angle but I remember William Carlos Williams talking about how he started writing poetry. He had been interested mostly in becoming a 'track star' but an incidence of 'heart strain' at a crucial age (mid teens) made him focus on other things. This struck me when I read it as I had only started writing poems myself in the year after suffering an aneurism at the age of sixteen. I've no doubt that this focussed the mind, and no doubt that anything in ones situation that makes taking the easy path impossible might have the same effect.
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