The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Rebecca Elsenheimer:

My friend Jen has this guess to make:

ETA I want to go on record here as saying that I think the author of the article is Lydia Davis. She was hailed some time back as being one of America's better short story writers, but her first and subsequent novels came out at the same time the author claims her books were published. Furthermore, the author says one of her books got a nice write up by Time Magazine, which Lydia Davis's Samuel Johnson Is Indignant did get during that particular year, and finally that book, which would be Lydia Davis's most recent, was ranked 56000 by Amazon.com today, and since the sale of one book can jostle a ranking by up to 20000, it's entirely possible it had a ranking of 40000 when she wrote the article.

The best device for coffee shops? A PDA with a folding keyboard. I use a Palm Tungsten E with the Palm wireless keyboard. All told the setup cost me less than $300.00, it's got a built-in mp3 player with headphone jack, and a better screen than most monitors. Plus it doesn't have solitaire, internet, or any of the other pesky distractions my home computer has.

John's article is great, and I love the cynical bent to it. Too many writing advice pages or books are so happy lovey-dovey and hand-holding. Sometimes you just need to told to shove it. (Ah, but every writing column should also come with a #11 -- unless you're being paid to do so, quit sitting around analyzing writing and actually _write_.)

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