Man blinks book

Some days writing is hard. Actually, it’s not so much the writing, but the sitting down to write that is the hard part for me. But my hardest day writing is nothing compared to every day of writing for the former editor of the French version of ELLE Magazine, Jean-Dominique Bauby. A stroke left him completely paralyzed, except for the ability to blink his left eye.

His left eye is all he needed to write his next book. He blinked out every letter of his memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to an assistant who held up a slate with the alphabet.

Think about it. No pre-writing. No notes. No cut and paste. No spell check. No google.

A new movie…

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What's a literary emergency?

It’s when your agent emails you a long list of things that an editor interested in your book wants and you think to yourself, “Awesome! I should be able to get that knocked out in the next three or four days.” And then you read that you have to have it all done by 6pm and it’s already 3pm.

I got it all taken care of. With more time, I could have done a better job, but it is what it is. Plus, instead of hanging over my head for a few days, it was only there for a few (very intense) hours.

My proposal has made it several steps into a few publishing houses and I’ve got my fingers crossed. I really can’t think of…

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The guilt of nothing

Ever have one of those days where you out-lazy the family pet? I had one Saturday.

Annie was Christmas shopping with her family for the day and it was just me and Oreo.

OREO: “Are you just going to sit there all day?”

ME: “What have you done today Ms. Perrrductive.”

OREO: “I cleaned my belly. Took a nap. Ate. Stared at the ceiling for no apparent reason because I like to make you think I see ghosts. And stuck my butt in your face. All-in-all, I’ve been pretty busy. What have you done?”

ME: “I’ve lead the Fighting Illini in NCAA Basketball 2005 to a 10-0 record.”

OREO: “That’s pathetic. I saw what you did. You made a guy that could jump higher, run faster,…

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