Saturday, May 26, 2012

Book 29: On Writing

I was excited to read this because I'd love to write more and better. I had heard great things about it.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

I didn't love it. It was ok, but not life-changing, as I had been lead to believe it might be. Part of the problem: I don't really want to write fiction, which it leans heavily toward. A lot of the same principles apply, of course, but still.

And how lame is this: I came away with the feeling that writing and being published is really hard. Waaaaaah. Finding out which small literary magazines are best suited to your work (do they even exist anymore)? Work. Drudgery, dare I say. Submitting stories to the selected literary magazines? Wow, that's lots of work. Finding an agent? More work. I suspect some of this might have changed since the book was written, as it certainly has changed since Stephen King was first published. The feeling of my heart sinking at reading all of this means I'm probably not motivated enough to go through the process.

1 comment:

  1. What I liked about this book, was hearing that writers aren't a gifted few with inborn talent, but can be anyone who works at the craft seriously and bit-by-bit everyday.

    ReplyDelete