Proprietor of ODD

Today Noted Abroad begins to run in monthly installments, rather than weekly. We’re thinking that such an arrangement will provide your correspondent a breather as he goes about learning how to be married. Great idea, except that a writer never really takes a breather. However indolent he or she may appear, however shiftless, your typical writer is constantly observing, scrutinizing, and documenting life’s curiosities. Day after day we go about filling notebooks with assorted notes and observations, with overheard dialogue, story notions, and character sketches. This obsessive documenting of life and concocting of realities, often unsolicited and unpaid, can look a lot like a mental disorder. Obsessive-Documenting Disorder, we might call it. ODD. Certainly more than a few writers have found medication attractive, the only question being whether to administer the medicine to oneself or seek the help of a trained professional, e.g. a bartender.

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