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Mark Taylor
@mark
Not sure why we bothered with any subsequent writing-about-writing when back in 1615 Cervantes gave us 'Writing a book is like inflating a dog in the street'.
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'I know very well what the temptations of the devil are, and one of the greatest is to give a man the idea that he can compose and publish a book and thereby win as much fame as fortune, as much fortune as fame; in confirmation of this, I should like you, using all your wit and charm, to tell him this story:
In Sevilla there was a madman who had the strangest, most comical notion that any madman ever had. What he did was to make a tube out of a reed that he sharpened at one end, and then he would catch a dog on the street, or somewhere else, hold down one of its hind legs with his foot, lift the other with his hand, fit the tube into the right place, and blow until he had made the animal as round as a ball, and then, holding it up, he would give the dog two little pats on the belly and let it go, say- ing to the onlookers, and there were always a good number of them:
"Now do your graces think it's an easy job to blow up a dog?" Now does your grace think it's an easy job to write a book?'
