(Click here for Essential Writer’s Resource #5)
Welcome back! Once again, I'm devoting this month to my personal picks out of the vast quagmire of resources offered to new writers!
This one starts out with a confession: I haven’t used this resource much in the past several years. It’s not the most exhaustive guide to story structure, character development, editing, publishing, or any of the many other topics it covers, but it’s an excellent crash course on making that first transition from person who scribbles compulsively in the margins of notebooks to writer on the way to becoming an author.
Every author eventually develops a personalized system for gathering inspiration, drafting, and editing. Chances are there are things in this book that work for each of us and things that don’t. In the case of the things that don’t, you change them, or you research more specialized advice on alternative methods, with the advantage of knowing what to look for.
The writing process gets to feel intuitive after a while, but people rarely talk about the fact that, in the beginning, it’s a case of you don’t know what you don’t know, and The Complete Writer’s Kit is the best cure I know.
Back when I was the compulsive scribbler, creating constant disjointed fragments of stories and journals, this is the book that made concepts like keeping designated writing notebooks, planning projects, finishing whole drafts of things, and then actually making changes to them click for me.
No joke.
Without this book, who knows? The world could have been forever treated to the fandom-inspired poetry that was the extent of my fifteen-year-old uncultivated writing attention span (okay, probably not, but seriously, it made the change a whole lot quicker and easier).
If you’re just beginning to get that inkling that fiction could be your calling, this is the best place I know to start.
Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, on Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!
Welcome back! Once again, I'm devoting this month to my personal picks out of the vast quagmire of resources offered to new writers!
This one starts out with a confession: I haven’t used this resource much in the past several years. It’s not the most exhaustive guide to story structure, character development, editing, publishing, or any of the many other topics it covers, but it’s an excellent crash course on making that first transition from person who scribbles compulsively in the margins of notebooks to writer on the way to becoming an author.
Every author eventually develops a personalized system for gathering inspiration, drafting, and editing. Chances are there are things in this book that work for each of us and things that don’t. In the case of the things that don’t, you change them, or you research more specialized advice on alternative methods, with the advantage of knowing what to look for.
The writing process gets to feel intuitive after a while, but people rarely talk about the fact that, in the beginning, it’s a case of you don’t know what you don’t know, and The Complete Writer’s Kit is the best cure I know.
Back when I was the compulsive scribbler, creating constant disjointed fragments of stories and journals, this is the book that made concepts like keeping designated writing notebooks, planning projects, finishing whole drafts of things, and then actually making changes to them click for me.
No joke.
Without this book, who knows? The world could have been forever treated to the fandom-inspired poetry that was the extent of my fifteen-year-old uncultivated writing attention span (okay, probably not, but seriously, it made the change a whole lot quicker and easier).
If you’re just beginning to get that inkling that fiction could be your calling, this is the best place I know to start.
Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, on Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!
