Productivity and “The Perfect Apostrophe”
Though Merlin was kind enough to leave my name out of his 43 Folders podcast on “the perfect apostrophe,” I am, in fact, the “very nice man whose life [he] temporarily ruined.” While he overstates the damage done by just a tad, his depiction of me as “a character out of a 30s screwball comedy” is uncanny.
[odeo=http://odeo.com/audio/1315297/view]
But beyond my obvious involvement as a character in his story, it resonated with me on a number of other levels as well. For instance, I went through a remarkably similar process when planning to write this book:
My problem wasn’t with the apostrophe, since I just copied it from another Hacks cover. My problem was getting the drop shadow on the title right–that, and not being able to get the fonts right on the tagline and byline, even though you’d assume I’d have access to the originals (you’d be wrong).
Anyway, I’ll also have to note that my book idea didn’t get beyond the cover stage either.
Brian Sawyer 
Terrie 2:00 pm on June 15, 2006 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Nice!
Now I can feel better about the time I’ve spent on hacks books parodies; at least that project was “done” when the cover was finished and I didn’t have to write anything to back it up!
Productivity and the Postmaster « Brian Sawyer 9:13 am on October 17, 2006 Permalink | Log in to Reply
[…] Following up on Merlin Mann’s knee-slapping anecdote of Productivity and the “Perfect Apostrophy,” he recently alerted me to an interview he gave for the National Post, which contains this related nugget of a story about his ill-fated book on productivity: One of my favourite stories about that is I’m on my cellphone, walking down the street, talking to my co-author and we are saying, ‘The book! The book! This is terrible!’ And in my hand I’ve got a Netflix [mail-delivered DVD] and a copy of the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. I’m going to the library and the mailbox,” he recalls, speaking even faster now. “I’m having this heated conversation and I drop my Netflix in the mailbox but then I realize it isn’t my Netflix I’ve put in the mailbox but the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, which is funny if you know that not only is Benjamin Franklin the philosophical godfather of the life-hacks movement, but he was the first postmaster of the United States. So, I threw my library book in the mailbox. That is how my mind works. […]
Editor/Author Relationship as Marx Brothers Routine « Brian Sawyer 9:07 am on January 25, 2008 Permalink | Log in to Reply
[…] posted before about Merlin Mann’s description of our failed book project, in which he describes me as […]