Monday, April 25, 2011

On Writing

So we think we cannot write.  We don't have enough time.  Our lives are too stressful.  We are "blocked."  The words are coming too slowly.  We can't get the language right.  The images in our head have become a chaos.  The lines we compose in our head when we think we are not writing disappear and never reappear...

I don't know how many times I have said such things, aloud or within my mind.  How often have I complained about the "struggle" I am having with writing?  And then there's this little reminder:  Jean-Dominique Bauby dictated the entire text of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by blinking his left eye.  Paralyzed by a massive stroke, he composed the book in his head at night from his hospital bed and then dictated the book using a process called "partner assisted scanning" where the person taking dictation recited the French alphabet slowly over and over and Bauby blinked when the right letter was reached.  The average word took nearly two minutes to spell out.  He died within days of the books publication.

I think we can find our way to words.

1 comment:

  1. What we often see as boundaries and barriers are only so because of our own volition. Bauby was an amazing man.

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