Legendary playwright Lillian Hellman was on her deathbed, unable to do anything for herself including the simple act of lighting one of her beloved cigarettes. One of her lifelong associates was at her bedside. Miss Hellman was obviously fading fast.

"How are you my dear?" He asked lovingly.

Miss Hellman opened her eyes to slits and said "I've got the damdest case of writer's block I've ever had."

Whenever I get the amateur version of writer's block I often find it helpful to go back through some of the E mails readers have sent me for inspiration.

One group of messages caught my eye from a few months back after I had mentioned the name of a Kansas town.

I want to thank all of you who sent me notes in the wake of that column correcting my spelling of Coffeyville, Kansas. I spelled it "Coffeeville" with an extra e and no y. I imagine the Chamber of Commerce in greater Coffeyville got up in arms over the whole sordid mess. I was expecting to get one of those "We have contacted our solicitors" letters from them but none has arrived to date.

But the critical response of local readers was betrayed by your southern gentility. Most of you were very charming while telling me that I was a lunkhead.

After the fifth or sixth note that I read I began to notice the common theme. Your first order of business was to point out my error. Then, each of you went on to say how much you enjoyed reading the column and some of you even rattled off references to your favorites.

Upon re-reading them, I found myself basking unashamedly in your praise when it suddenly came back to me that, despite the candy coating, you each had written to critique my work. The thought struck me that here were all these people who claimed to enjoy my column over the course of time but did not write until they saw something wrong.

That is when the idea hit me.

I am going to start including "throwdown" misspelled words in most of my columns.

That way the most observant and critical among you will be driven to write and let me know that I didn't get one past you. By virtue of your good upbringing you will then be obliged to tell me how wonderful I am to make me feel better.

It all comes down to a win-win situation for me. I will know not to take the criticism to heart because I will have precipitated it on purpose. I will, however, still be able to wallow in the compensatory praise that is sure to accompany.

The editorial staff should love it because it will take the pressure off of them to find all my errors. Even if they miss one that I didn't intend to misspell they can always lay the blame at my door. If they are imaginative they can probably even explain typos elsewhere in the paper and paint me as the culprit.

I think we're onto something here folks. Who says you need a computer to be interactive?

Wrider's block?

Humbug.