Confessions of a Human Nerve Ending

About ten years ago, I came up with the following idea:  what if I wrote with my left hand?  I suspected my penmanship would improve over time as I became more versatile with it, but would what I wrote and how I wrote about subjects change? As a general rule, the left hand is connected to the right hemisphere of the brain and the right hand is connected to the left hemisphere of the brain.   Would this be noticeable in my writing?  I don't know.   So in April I begin this rather unscientific study by, most mornings, just simply writing in a big sketch book with my left hand. April 4th, 2011 The idea that my writing, my penmanship, will improve is a hopeful one. Another one is the idea that I'll tap some otherwise unused portion of my brain because my left hand is wired differently than my right. Science supports the idea of different hemispheres connected to left and right, but surely it it thinks much, much faster.  It might even be faster...

On Being a Writer                 I’m not sure why, but at an obviously weak moment when I was 17 years old I sat down at my desk and wrote a story.   And after no editing, revising, creative writing classes, or real encouragement from any real writers or teachers, no ambition, discipline or any reasonable degree of aptitude  announced –to myself mostly –and my best friend, “I want to be a writer.”                 I wish I’d never uttered that phrase.   Some ____ years later, I’m saddled with the weight of that phrase.   I had no idea what I was getting into.   I mean, this is America.  No one really writes anymore, or at least how I imagined writing to be.   Stephen King or Mary Higgins Clark don’t write; they work:  8 hours a day, complex formulas, books out on deadlines, b...

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