Simon sat alone at a table thinking of ending it all. His published collection of short stories had been called promising by Publishers Weekly and the New York Times, but five years passed and he had rewritten the first page to his novel a hundred times. He spent the advance on some pretty terrible choices. I mean, who buys safari jackets anymore? Still, he thought it made him Hemingwayesque. And so he began to write the suicide note not realizing his life would be saved by the very thing that drove him to the brink… writer’s block.