Erica Grieder, who stuttered as a child, reflects on the affliction:
Is there a bright side to stuttering? Not in my view. As you would imagine, a number of stutterers have become well-known writers. Surprisinglsy, perhaps, some have gone on to become well-known as speakers (Gray cites a number; I would add Joe Biden, James Earl Jones, Tavis Smiley, and Carly Simon; see here for a clip of the latter two talking about it.) The armchair psychology explanation would be that people with a stutter are alienated from their own ability to communicate, and reminded of that at every opportunity; they may therefore be more sensitive to both the value of speech and its limits. (Another armchair explanation is that suggested by the film The King's Speech, that stutterers lack confidence; this one, in my experience, seems to get the causality backwards.) I would trade being able to write for being able to speak without being miserably self-conscious most of the time, but perhaps people who have the opposite problem have the opposite feeling.
The Dish 