Guest Blog: Marty Kihn on Working Without a Deadline

Bestselling* author Marty Kihn reveals the secret of his success:

How is it possible to get something done without a deadline?  An easy question, really.

Get a dog.  I’m totally serious. My beloved Bernese Mountain Dog, Hola, has for the past five years awakened me every morning at 6 a.m. and not a moment later. She won’t leave me alone until I physically vacate the bed.  She even adjusts for Daylight Savings Time (don’t ask me how) – but, sadly, she has no concept of weekends, holidays, snow days, sick days or mornings when I’d just rather not bother.  Every day is the same day, and so in the inexorable logic of dog ownership (meaning, the dog owns me), every day of my life starts the same way.

Most writers require routine. In this way they are similar to children – and dogs.

Once I’ve rounded the Trinity Church graveyard (“Manhattan’s Only Active Cemetery”) with my four-legged love child, it’s not possible to go back to sleep, especially since I’m also a very weak trainer and can’t seem to stop her jumping up into my spot with her head on my pillow. So what can I do? Go get some coffee and write something.

Although it has proven pretty effective for five years now, my method does have a flaw. Sooner or later, inevitably, a certain theme started to invade my work, nuzzling its way gently into page after page. Yes, I’m writing about my dog. And I’m reading the work to her as I finish it.

Luckily, she loves everything I do. Unconditionally.

Martin Kihn is the author, most recently, of A$$hole: How I Got Rich & Happy By Not Giving a Damn About Anyone.  *Although blacklisted by a cowardly media elite in America when it came out last year, A$$hole is a breakout bestseller in Germany, where it is currently in the Top 20 in paperback. Martin is proud to be known as the David Hasselhoff of satirical non-fiction.

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Settling In

Our dog, Lucy, does it every morning.  She roams around trying to get a feel for whether anyone will be at home, and in which rooms.  She tries out one spot – splayed on the hall landing, a watchful eye toward the front door – but soon abandons it for another.  She jumps on an unmade bed and turns around three times, sinks down, curls into a ball.  After a while she stretches out long, her belly as rounded and freckled as a cow’s.

I have my own version of this routine:  a mug of hot coffee, a comfortable wingback chair – no, perhaps the old chaise in the sunroom window – a college-ruled notepad (faint blue lines on white paper, a firm pink margin), an old-fashioned micro-point Uniball pen.  Circle three times, curl in a ball, settle in deep.

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