101 Reasons to Stop Writing

Englewood, NJ — Gaming technology company WolfKing USA today announced that its new "hybrid" gaming keyboard, the WolfKing Warrior XXTreme, is growing in popularity amongst bestselling authors looking for an edge over their competition. Many writers report that the new design allows them to write two words at a time, effectively doubling their previous output.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Memories of My Melancholy Whores, said of the new keyboard: "When I first saw this thing, I was like, ‘Whoa, man, that shit is f***ing crazy!’ I mean, all the keys are in two big circles! When I first used it I thought I was flying a spaceship, like I was William Shatner on the Millennium Falcon. It’s like rolling on twenty-twos, only its a freakin’ keyboard."

Thomas Pynchon, reclusive author of Gravity’s Rainbow, claims that he can type twice as fast on the XXTreme keyboard. "I’ve always been a hunt-and-peck typist. I have to look down at the keyboard, type a letter, look up, make sure it was the right letter, then look down again. I can never remember which letters are under my right or left hand, and by the time I finish a word I’ve forgotten the rest of the sentence I wanted to write. It’s exhausting. When I wrote my first novel, V., it took most of a day just to do the title page. But with the XXTreme, I’ve got most of the alphabet on both sides. I’m blazing now. I reckon I could finish my next novel in under four years, rather than my usual seven. Not to mention, I rule on real-time strategy games now. I’ve been addicted since Command & Conquer III, and I love the Age of Empires series, but I’ve never been able to finish the single player campaigns before. Now I’m going online with my new skillz, taking it to the h8rz!"

Christopher Paolini, author of the bestselling yet critically derided Eragon, said the keyboard finally shatters the one-word-at-a-time barrier that has held writers back since the invention of the typewriter. "For fifteen decades we have been enslaved by the tyranny of the rectangular keyboard layout. It limits our thinking, forcing us to crouch over as if in penitence, making claws of our fingers as we tap out a single word. But this new keyboard echoes the principal design ethic of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man — the keys laid out in two circles, as indeed the extended fingers form two circles. It is symbolic of our desire to grab our future with both hands, to grasp and shape the written word as we struggle to express the abstract, the conceptual, through the imperfect medium of the physical. The two circles, almost but not touching, represent the duality of mind, the dextrous and the sinistrous, the interface between our intellectual and animal beings. At least, that’s what Dan Brown told me, but I don’t know who told him. All I know is that now I totally kick ass in World of Warcraft. I’m a level 43 Mage now, and I’ve got lots of ideas for the Eragon sequels. "

Neil Gaiman, World Fantasy Award-winning creator of the Sandman graphic novels, and co-writer of the computer-animated feature film Beowulf, said the keyboard will force authors to amend the advice they offer to aspiring writers. "People are always approaching me, and the few other authors of my stature, and asking us how we write, like there’s some magical secret to it that we’re going to let them in on just because they asked. And I always say, and I know Stevie King says this too, "The only way to write is one word at a time," because it’s the most facetious, dismissive, content-free, yet technically irrefutable advice we can give to the kind of talentless pleb that needs to ask that question in the first place. Now, we’re going to have to say ‘one word at a time, or two if you’ve got a WolfKing Warrior XXTreme keyboard.’"

Bestselling legal thriller author John Grisham expressed his amazement that no-one had come up with the design before. "It’s simple economics — more keys means more words, more words means more books, more books means more money, more money means you can keep up with the latest gaming hardware and big-ass plasma screens that pull more power than Tallahassee. Finally, I can catch up with that goddamn machine James Patterson, and not just on the bestseller lists. I’m going to frag his ass in Halo 3 multiplayer. I’ve got Jeanette Winterson on my team, and she can hit a gnat’s testicles with a sniper rifle and a clear line of sight. His best teammate is Jo Rowling, and while she’s a fantastically successful author, she couldn’t hit a Warthog with a plasma cannon if it was driven right at her."

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Maya Angelou, whose legendary status in the online gaming community led her to consult with WolfKing on the XXTreme design, said she hopes that the keyboard will foster links between game developers and the literary elite. "Words fall like rain from my fingers, the left and the right dance together like lovers, and the newbies and campers die like little vermin. Writers need games to remind us that our art needs to be vital, if it is to survive. Games need writers, because the dialogue and story in most games is just crap."

The WolfKing Warrior XXTreme is available exclusively through Dell’s gaming portal.

– Stephen Jayson Harris covers the video game industry for Poetry Review. He has written a book about the evolution in video game writing, Entering the Second Dimension. His doctoral thesis, "Post-Colonial Metaphor in Grand Theft Auto", was rejected, and he is barred from attending Rockstar Games press events.