Monday, January 17, 2005

Thanks Stevie

Just finished re-reading On Writing by Stephen King. It is one of the best, most useful books on the subject I have read. It has a lot about his life growing up, how he came to be a writer, worked to be a writer and then about his writing life- how he goes about it- but the guts of it is just sound, hard hitting advice about what one must do to write well. He makes no bones about it being hard work, emphasizing that there are no shortcuts, no magic bullets. I was right, it was Stephen King who said you must also read a lot to be a good writer.

I am reading at the moment Too Close to the Falls, a charming memoir of a precocious girl growing up in Lewiston, NY. Enjoying it thoroughly. She had a lot of unusual characters and events to enliven her narrative. My childhood is absolutely boring in comparison!!

No comments:

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
Dorothy Parker, Not So Deep as a Well (1937)