Hello,

Are you writing today? I am a few lines here and there that are coming together into a great novel though slowly and surely which is the best way for me. Like you I’m sure; I do a lot of research because I’m not terribly smart( though you probably are) and I need to get what I’m writing, right: I research hard, it’s the blood flowing through my body of work. I was going to write more on this topic; then I read an article about the book and movie, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death by Jean-Dominique Bauby.

I realized how being able to write is such a gift, no matter how you do it and that there are no obstacles to the determination to write as beautifully exampled by Mr. Bauby who suffered a stroke that left him with a condition called “locked in syndrome”. He was paralyzed except for one eye motion and a few other minor movements. Mr. Bauby’s mind was untouched and was filled with so many things to say, to write, that he; dictating by blinking his left-eye lid, created in fourteen months his novel. What is there to say about the awe-inspiring determination to be heard, to write? We’ll find a way to do it no matter how we are physically or mentally.

I’m proud to be—at least in my mind—a writer like Mr. Bauby who will try and write despite any obstacles though I can’t (wouldn’t want to) come even close to the challenges he had to overcome. I’m just as proud to be a member of the club of writers who had a member like Mr. Bauby who died seventeen months after his new writing life began.

Keeping writing; there are really no excuses not to is it.

If you have any comments or suggestions I have a new e-mail address at: mathewsla@hotmail.com

Until next time, God willing,