Thursday, October 02, 2008

On Writing

I am in the middle of reading Stephen King's* "On Writing" - a "how to" manual which is proving to be quite different from what I had expected. (Take writing advice from Stephen King? You bet. You'd be doing well to be half as successful as he, and if your penchant is to write "literature" rather than "popular fiction" the same tools/rules apply.) Key learning thus far: if you are writing about the possessive, always use an 's even if the word ends in an s. Oh, and his other advice: if you want to be a writer, you have to also be a reader. I would also posit that you would do well to have a good editor. Also, if you want to be a writer: write ... regularly each day .. set yourself a limit and just do it.
Which reminds me - it's going to be November in a minute - and time again for NaNoWriMo otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month. Some 100,000 people took part in the event last year where you simply undertake to write something each day in November - and have a 50,000 word novel completed at the end of the month. The NaNoWriMo.org site is currently having difficulties but you can check there in a few days to find out the details, or get more of a flavour for the "event" from the NaNoWriMo entry in Wikipedia (sorry, remote posting this means I can't insert a URL link).

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