I’m watching the American Masters Show on PBS, a documentary about Woody Allen. He started writing jokes and submitting them to various newspapers and magazines who began to print them. But he didn’t want the kids in school to tease him about them so he came up with the pen name Woody Allen. Most of what he did in his young days resulted in a working life that was relentless. He practices his clarinet constantly. He starts writing a new project the moment the current project is done with editing. He types on a manual typewriter. When asked, he demonstrated his cut and paste method using scissors and a bunch of small staplers.
I come away so far with the notion that
- he did the work in several arenas and lived to tell the tale with some success.
- Also, touch typing will always serve you well.
- Having a cool alias/pen name is a good thing.
I’m going to work on the last one.
