The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield My rating: 2 of 5 stars This is an odd book which is kind of a stream of consciousness rant about the ways in which an artist struggles with what the author calls “Resistance.” That in itself is…
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How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One by Stanley Fish My rating: 5 of 5 stars I read this book immediately after being disappointed by It was the Best of Sentences, It was the Worst of Sentences, so I may have been primed to have an overly enthusiastic reaction to a book…
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It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences by June Casagrande My rating: 2 of 5 stars I was expecting something different from this book. The back of book blurbs used phrases like “wickedly funny” and “you’ll laugh all the way to writing better” (the former is a sentence, I know,)…
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This week in #storycraft, I asked the Storycrafters to discuss the reason June Casagrande gives us to learn our fundamentals, in It was the Best of Sentences, it was the Worst of Sentences, : “If you want to master the art of the sentence, you must first accept a somewhat unpleasant truth – one a…
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Today’s #Storycraft chat was an experiment of sorts. For the past six or seven weeks, I have been spruiking that the chat on May 1st (US time) would be a book club type event at which we would be discussing “On Writing” by Stephen King. I chose King’s book because when I asked for books…
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Beginnings, Middles & Ends by Nancy KressMy rating: 5 of 5 stars Beginnings, Middles & Ends, by Nancy Kress is one of the best writing how-to’s that I’ve read, yet. The book is targeted at both novelists and short story writers of any experience. Kress assumes little writing theory on the part of the reader…
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How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author by Janet Evanovich My rating: 2 of 5 stars If you love Evanovich, you will love this book. She is generous with her process and uses lots of examples from own work, so it is certainly a glimpse into the writing life of this author. As a…
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The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction by John Dufresne My rating: 3 of 5 stars Dufresne’s The Lie That Tells a Truth is an excellent guide to the craft, I enjoyed the philosophy, but I would suggest that it is more for those who are theory novices (as distinct from…
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I’ve been enjoying Betsy Learner’s blog for a long time so I feel a little silly that it has taken me so long to read her book: The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice for Writers. In fact, I can’t even take credit for having finally decided to do so, as it was the…
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We all know that the best way to teach is to engage and entertain with the material – this book does it in spades; I couldn’t put it down! Rather than write another how-to book, Mittelmark and Newman have produced a book in a format which will be familiar to TV Tropes readers, naming, describing…
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