A few years ago I bought John Hodgman's The Areas of my Expertise
Even once you have chosen a Dramatic Situation, however, writing a book can still be a tedious process. According to my own observation, every writer must have six essentials at his command. Some are born with them. Others must develop them over many years, or hire a professional to provide them.7 They are...
Figure 5: Can You Describe Capt. Thompson's Facial Hair?
empathy
the willingness to endure solitude
the belief that the world cares about what you have to say
the ability to describe facial hair accurately
a large desk in a quiet room of your own in which to chase your demons (preferably a circular room, so that the demons have no place to hide)
special stationery with pictures of typewriters and/or quills on top
7. This is most common for "empathy," and it is not unusual for even the finest novelists to hire a ghost empathizer for their third or fourth book.
While there are many today who test their writerly mettle by participating in things like NaNoWriMo, by Hodgman's standard the real test is in writing about this event! How do you fare? Are you a writer? As a quiz, can you describe this lot?
In other matters of pogonotrophy, today I also discovered this chart on "The Trustworthiness of Beards"—and discovered that according to this chart and my g/f, I'm something of a "questionable" sort! Pity for the gents in the above images, many of them don't seem to rate at all.
