A Dog's Tale

My co-worker Ed is visually impaired. He has a seeing-eye dog who has his own blog.

Willie-the-seeing-eye-dog Blog has been in existence for about six months and has had two postings.  Willie and his ghost-writer Ed have been too busy to give it the attention it needs.

Ed has asked me to take over the responsibility of ghost-writing for Willie.  After all, I'm a writer. How hard could it be to switch from writing fictional characters to channeling a live dog?

I've said yes to writing the blog.  But the request reminded me of a simple truth about artists that might not be intuitive. Our abilities tend to be limited to specific genres and forms.  Consider dance. A dancer who has trained in hip-hop for years will not be able to pick up a role in classical ballet overnight.  While hip-hop and ballet are both forms of dance, the style, mood, and required skills can be very different. This holds true for writing. Just because I'm good at novel-length fiction, it isn't a certainty that I will be good at short stories, poetry, or ghost-writing for a non-verbal creature.

But I'm going to give it a shot.  If you check Willie's blog periodically, you may see the ghost of Elizabeth there.