Essential Tool: Hand Sanitizer

Pep Talks, Warnings & Screeds by George Singleton, illustrated by Daniel Wallace

Keep a small bottle of instant hand sanitizer on your desk at all times, for two reasons. One, it's hard to write when you have a head cold or the flu, and this stuff, supposedly, kills 99.99 percent of germs in fifteen seconds. Two, a bottle on your desk will remind you to clean up your sentence-by-sentence writing.