Sick Writing
Friday, August 1st, 2008
Fighting a fever, a bronchial cough and the side effects of caffeine withdrawal, I finished writing a 1,700-word article this week that will be published in Present Magazine on Monday. I actually typed about half of it before the symptoms worsened the day before, using my thumbs and my BlackBerry. The handheld device and its miniature screen seems so much less daunting than a PC and is apparently a medium in which I feel less pressue to write well. It must be a Zen thing. Less thought, more emotion, and feeling more comfortable in using my first flashes on a subject – my first thoughts on whatever comes to mind.
When you’re writing on deadline, as I was, you have no choice but to perform no matter what the circumstances. The fever kept me strangely focused. I could feel it behind my eyes, locked on the screen and working the buttons while I layed on my back – flat in bed on a thick comforter, under the whips of the ceiling fan, across from a bay of windows that let’s in soft light and opens up onto an intersection where the neighborhood boys gather in the summertime and cuss as loduly as they see fit until an adult comes out to check the mail or walk the driveway and they hush their voices. (more…)
