Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
Some really great useable essays for teaching writing.
Taking a break between sessions of writing his next crime thriller, Japanese author Hideo Yokoyama This is an outstanding collection of essays from over forty established authors speaking on the process of writing and leading a literary life. Highly recommended!On the topic of writers on writing, I'd like to take this opportunity to share my favorite 10 Rules for Writers set down by one of the contributors to this collection, none other than American author Richard Ford. Here goes.1 Marry somebo...
Been picking this up off and on for the last couple weeks. Have randomly read about half the entries. Enjoyed most of what I've read so far. 'On writing' is sometimes misleading, in that the topic receives oblique treatment if you are looking for advice on how to write. Rather, these are personal essays about being writers. They respond to readers reactions, Mary Gordon writers ingeniously about her pens and her notebooks, several write in sort a stream of consciousness in which characters parta...
This is a great idea made manifest, but as is almost always the case with collections of essays by all different writers, it's a mixed bag. It took a half-dozen essays before I was hooked by Nicholas Delbanco's about emulating other writers, and another half-dozen before Mary Gordon's delicious piece about her collection of notebooks and their various functions. Then I hit this blue streak in the last third of the collection with Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates (who's essay about running and ho...
This book seemed like it was going to be a really interesting collection of writings by different authors ABOUT WRITING. Most of the. Just ended up being semi-reflective narratives about short periods in their lives or completely random little essays about their own interests. I wanted to read ABOUT WRITING. Not the writer's life, not the writer's hobbies, and not random writers' back stories. The problem was that a lot of the time, the different authors weren't even talking about the same subje...
All right, I hesitated whether to give this book two or three stars. At the end, I'm giving it three, but two would perhaps be a more objective rating. I mean by this that my by then detached head was having a hard time with some of the essays (as other people have pointed out), but eventually (as already said by some reviewers), half way through it got better and wiser, despite the occasional flimsy piece. Some articles on the first half definitely saved the day. Don't take me wrong; I did expe...
The writers in this book encompass a time period of sixty years. Yet, their writing advice (and examples) are more timeless than most professions. This is worth it for anyone, regardless if they write or not.
Read Annie Proulx’s essay entitled ‘Inspiration? Head down the back road, and stop for the yard sales’ (pp. 185-190). - for uni studies... Would like to read other essays in this book one day.
3.5I enjoyed the essays well enough, but now I am all full of hate toward writing/writers and I can’t really understand why, but I think it is about the search to put into words. Maybe not everything has to be put into words because to put into words is to destroy, and the destruction is always so to the self-satisfaction of the destroyer. So I am destroying my feelings about this collection by writing about it, but I can’t self-satisfy because I am watching myself attempting to become empty of
This is a great collection of essays written by writers about the art of writing. There are essays by Saul Bellow, E.L. Doctorow, Louise Erdrich, Carl Hiaasen, Alice Hoffman, Alice Walker, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Elie Wiesel, and many others. Whether or not you are interested in writing yourself, this collection is a fascinating read.
I felt in good hands reading the lives of these famous writers. I did not feel so alone anymore. It was good to know that these literary personalities also adopt idiosyncratic postures, dress in creative ways, pick unusual settings, collect dozens of notebooks with the most eccentric designs, meditate, and even go running in order to write. Other things I learned were:1) The neeed to read in order to write2)The impact of cinema on writing - cinema has claimed a lot of writing's former glory and
“They don’t write good. They have people over there, like Maggie Haberman and others, they don’t — they don’t write good. They don’t know how to write good.” Well phrased, Mr Trump!
This is a collection of 46 essays by well-known authors, including E. L. Doctorow, Alice Hoffman, David Mamet, Sue Miller, John Updike and Kurt Vonnegut. Many aspects of a writing life were covered, such as inspiration, motivation, writing habits, writing inhibitors, writing in long hang with pen and paper, and editing on computer. My least favorite topic on writing - the impending death of books, along with the death of readers, culture and art - was also discussed. One repeated theme was choos...
2.5/5 stars. It is a little difficult for me to review this as it is an anthology of essays. In general, I dislike anthologies such as this one - they're just not my cup of tea. However, compared to other similar anthologies I have read, this one is better than many. There were several authors in here whose work I really enjoy, which sparked my interest in specific essays. I found numerous essays in here really interesting or entertaining, however there were also plenty that I did not particular...
Diverse views on writing, not too heavy and not too light!
Probably one of my least favorite books on this subject.