I'm a sucker for books on the writing life. In fact, I've picked one up yesterday called The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing, which I think anyone writing fiction would find of interest (even if you don't have any intention of writing a novel). It's edited by Meg Leder, Jeff Heffron, and the editors of Write's Digest but it includes interviews with and articles by Margaret Atwood, Terry Brooks, Tom Clancy, Terry McMillan, Sue Grafton, and one or two other people you might have heard of. You might look for it at your library or take a glimpse at it at your local bookstore. I've got three more on order that I am looking forward to getting next week: Crime Writer's Reference Guide: 1001 Tips on Writing the Perfect Murder by Martin Roth How to Write Killer Fiction: The Funhouse of Mystery & the Roller Coaster of Suspense by Carolyn Wheat Dark Thoughts: On Writing: Advice and Commentary from Fifty Masters of Fear and Suspense by Stan Wiater (Editor), Stanley Wiater (Editor) Yes, I have a weakness for a certain kind of writing about writing. No accounting for taste. Anyone else read any books on writing that they would like to share with the rest of us.

My books arrived early! I love getting new books. Now I have bus reading material. For some peculiar reason I enjoy reading about writing more than I do reading or actually writing fiction. Go figure.

I have two older books here that I began with to eliminate weaknesses in my writing. "Plot How to build short stories and novels that don't sag, fizzle, or trail off in scraps of frustrated revision-and how to rescue stories that do." by Ansen Dibell, Writers Digest Books 1988 and "Revising Fiction, A Handbook for Writers" by David Madden, Plume 1988. After reading a book about Beat Writers I now know I have lots of characters but they are all too famous and thin. I have been in the room at a lecture by Zora Arkus Duntov, Edward Teller, and "Kelly" Johnson. I have met J.S. McDonnell in an elevator and talked to him riding 5 floors. To get closer to a character I need Captain "Zeke" Cormier who promotes videos for Time/Life and whose briefing books I have read or Lt. "Randy" Cunningham whom I have spent some time with at Fightertown and has his own book "Foxtwo". To fictionalize and avoid libel and other nasty overlays what I read in the Beat Writers was very helpful about their dealings with publishers over decades.
That is sort of where I am. This morning I was trying to avoid a novel called "Cold Cast Iron." It has a lot of focal but needs to lay a foundation first of solid characters as the whole media changes.

The book by Ansen Dibell was on my library shelves, so I am checking it out for the weekend/ :) I've met Randy "Duke" Cunningham -- he's been a California politician for sometime, and I'm sure there's a story for someone there. I've met Rod Serling and Ray Bradbury, and a local newspaper columnist named John Sinor who had a style I greatly admired but could never duplicate. Oh well. Almost time to catch the bus and catch up on my reading. TGIF and happy weekend to everyone!

I have been racking my brain for famous women I have available as characters. I have gone to dinner and been hugged and kissed by the actress who played "Laura" on the "Little House on the Prairie" TV series and been to Laura Ingalls Wilder's house last year in Missouri. After that I have only decoys and phantoms with Mrs Roger Smith as I would characterize her coming out as Robert Lutz. I have met a woman who was a secretary at the C.I.A. and driven her to work several times. That is more institutional than personal. So my female character is almost dry.

My top 5, in no particular order: Orson Scott Card - Elements of Fiction: Characters & Viewpoint. Monica Wood - Elements of Fiction: Description. Orson Scott Card - How to Write Science Fiction. Rob Davis - Writing Dialogue and for Scripts. Gillian Robers - You Can Write a Mystery. I very highly recommend them, even if you don't want to write Sci-Fi or Mysteries. The advise they give is excellent.

I find, don't you, that really good advice applies to any type of fiction (novel, short story, drama or screenplay). :) Each speciality has it's own requirements, but the base of good writing tends to be very similar.

Writing Down the Bones--Natalie Goldberg The Artists Way & The Artists Way Morning Pages--Julia Cameron The kind of stuff that gets you unstuck in all laymans terms

A few more from my bookshelf: Revision; a creative approach to writing and rewriting fiction by David Michael Kaplan The Complete Guide to Editing Your Fiction, by Michael Seidman Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, by Patician Highsmith New Pointers on Playwriting, by Josefina Niggli (I also go back to playwriting when I search for structure for a story)

There is another way a book could "appear." One Sunday morning in December of 1968 I was climbing the winding road to Zabriskie point at dawn. My red pickup truck with white roof had two motorcycles in the back. One was my desert sled Norton P11 and the other was a highly modified Ducati monza Jr. that my wife rode. Passing an old mine road of bleached gravel I looked in the rear view mirro and saw we were not alone. A rare mercedes 600 "Grosser" was behind us taking the bends pressing hard up the incline. The chortle of the Chevrolet V-8 became a bit more laborious as I urged my choice on. The imagined contest continued as the impassive sky openned with the light of dawn. We were just holding our own as the product of German rebirth toiled luxuriously behind us it's chrome catching a glint f new light from time to time. Then it was over and we were roling up to the cliff face at Zabriskie Point looking down onto the Devil's Golf Course below. Now stopped and taking in the oranges and exploding red before us in the valley lit up from behind us my wife shouted,"That's William Holden." She was jumping out of the door now. Sure enough the actor in so many Navy themed pictures had been the driver of the mystery car behind us. My wife was talking animatedly to the old actor. I remebered something about how his finaces were shaky but that did not seem to fit the well over $14,000 car he stood next to. Then they called me to come over and the actors voice was cruel and forceful. I understood now what it was to act.

Attached Link: http://coba.shsu.edu/help/strunk

Strunk and White is a fine book to add to the list. :) It is a guide to and wonderful example of clear writing.

The master of Horror, Stephen King has written a very good book on the art of Writing, I recommend it, very articulate and well done. It should be a great help to anyone who is interested in writing as more then an expression of words.

I'm getting a lot out of "Art in Theory 1900-2000, An Anthology of Changing Ideas" Edited by Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, Blackwell Publishing,1992 (first published as Art in Theory 1900-1990). Most of the writers in it are critics as well as megalomaniacs like Marx and Hitler. Just to read that writing should be more than just "what happened" or that the early free love and abstract movements were totally destroyed by Stalin in favor of realism and worker art and that corrupt art was destroyed and artists thrown out of Berlin in a demand for sentimentality and Staatgheist with again realism gives me perspective looking at Computer Art and corporate media zero value for content and content creators. Watching the band wagon of anarchy and Communism switch horses alone is worth the read.

I read lots of these, but I don't tend to want to own them. I found Ursula Le Guin's "Steering the Craft" to be fascinating, and it's one that hasn't been mentioned, hmm, or how about "Telling Lies for Fun and Profit" that one was interesting... ...But I've never yet found a book as good as getting personalized advice. The author can only speak in generalities, and those generalities won't always apply, or you won't be able to see how they apply, or whatever.

Not everyone has access to getting personalized advice. And a book is something one can go back to for inspiration. Sometimes I like having a book just to know that it could be done even though I'm not the one who is doing it. Always interesting, to me, to see who is reading what. You can learn a lot about a person by seeing what is sitting on their nightstand.

I like fundamentals. Get rich quick mystery and pulp fiction holds only so much sway. I studied alphabets about 20 years ago and now find that early mixes of Latin/French and how it led to Olde English as described in the introduction to Kingsford's "Stonor Letters and Papers 1290-1483" Cambridge 1924 with ladies papers as well as the first Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas holds my foundation. Then an excursion back into Greek/Latin of 30 BC and how to target a audience as described in the introduction to Vitruvius "Ten Books on Architechture", Cambridge, 1999 gives the base a little more breadth.

Actually there are on-line crit groups all over the place. To get personalized advice, you merely need to be willing to give it in return. The main problem, of course, is the same problem you get with "How to Write" books. Everyone seems to say different things.

Everyone seems to say different things because different things work for different people There's only one universal: You're not a writer unless you write. Which is why I'm not a writer and have no advice I can usefully give myself. Instead I share what I can. If it's not good enough for someone else, that's fine. Everyone should seek out what works for them.

On Writing by William Zinnser Getting Into Character by Brandilyn Collins