Keeping My Head in the Game

I have, by actual count, 345 books on writing, which does not include books of interviews with authors, or “example” books (like plays or mysteries or whatever other genre I’m studying) or “research” books (books about places or times I’m writing about). It also does not include peripheral but related self-help (”get out of my own way”) books.

For me, reading about writing is a fundamental way of keeping my head in the writing game — keeping my attention on it. I find when I read books about writing, I get more new story ideas, more ideas for making what I’m already working on better, and I stay more focused on the whole process than I do if I’m not reading something about the craft.

Recent reads: “Dare to Be a Great Writer: 329 Keys to Powerful Fiction” by Leonard Bishop. Didn’t like it. In fact, I sooo didn’t like it that I sold it on amazon.com, and I almost NEVER sell a writing book, even one I’ve read. (I think at a minimum, a book about writing should be well-written!) The word from here — skip it!

On the other end of the spectrum: Twyla Tharp’s “The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life” — read it, loved it, immediately bought it for a friend who is an artist. Yes, Twyla’s a dancer, and when I picked the book up I was afraid that I would find it totally inaccessible. Boy, was I wrong. She writes about creativity in a way that touches on many fields of endeavor, and also about the mentality and mental processes of creativity, which are common to all artistic worlds.

Anyway, if you, like me, find that the FIRST task of writing is getting past the not-doing of it, you may find reading about it regularly — daily — helps keep you motivated. It sure helps me!

~ by seriouswriter on May 28, 2007.