1. When they gently broke grammar rules:
What can be said about disaster? I sometimes use the comma as a gentler semicolon, I like the way it makes a sentence breathe.
2. When the King of Horror called Papa "Cat:"
Hemingway's ultra short story: "Baby shoes for sale. Never worn." Cat should have been on Twitter.
3. When they let their caged bird sing:
When I was a volunteer mute and began to speak again, I realized I had left my voice, my voice had not left me.
4. When they revealed the paper skeletons in their closets:
I've been sitting here trying to decide if 13 unpublished books makes me really perseverant or just really stupid. Not sure which yet.
5. When they spoke in 0s and 1s:
even in our safe spaces we speak in coded languages
6. When they were a classier Urban Dictionary:
Twitter, reliquary of lost thoughts, brilliant insights, fleeting hopes.
7. When they reminded us that writing is rewriting:
I typed 'The End' today. But tomorrow I go back to pg 1. Will be chained to desk for next 6 weeks.
8. When they reminded us that books (er, children?) are our future:
For my 25,000th Tweet, a request: If you worry about the future, or just hope to make the world better, buy a book for a child today. #books
9. When life did not imitate art:
The irony of not being able to go on vacation is not lost on me.
(Straub published The Vacationers this May.)
10. When paradoxes created prose poems:
illustration, n.: We need a break in the words. We need to stop and look at the picture, and silently take in the details.
11. When they perfectly captured the bibliophile's life:
You'll never love a book like the book you discovered yourself and bought impulsively and read when you should have been doing other things.
12. When they took the "auto" out of "autobiography:"
The last line of your memoir will be written by someone else.
13. And does this even need explaining?
The microphone made crooning possible. Twitter might be changing writing: you can sing low and still reach the back of the room.
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