CPC: Week Two

Week the second! Highlights?

---Running into an old friend who I haven’t seen in six years. No biggie. Just walking down the streets of New York.

---Finding the perfect rooftop bar (with twinkle lights!) that serves my favorite hard cider.

---Touring and apartment-scouting in Brooklyn with my soon-to-be housemate. It’s like a summer camp down there! I kept getting distracted by all the puppies.

---Peter Pan Doughnuts. I had a chocolate crème-filled doughnut with a chocolate glaze. It was the size of my head and I only paid a dollar for it. I nearly died.  

---Oh, you wanted publishing news? Ha. OK. We were incredibly fortunate to have the creative team behind The Tiger’s Wife come to speak with us, including Téa Obreht (the author), Seth Fishman (the agent), Noah Eaker (the editor), Susan Kamil (his mentor/boss), and Jynne Martin (the publicist). We’d heard from several sources that a certain ineffable combination of alchemy and synergy must be present to create a bestseller. That combination, so hard to describe with words, was on full display that evening. I could tell they genuinely loved working together, and they were all so gracious with us. Téa signed everyone’s books long after she was supposed to leave, and she even remembered one of my friends from a book signing earlier in the summer. (She doodles a pretty adorable tiger.) I am completely rooting for her as her career develops, but I know she’ll be fine. She has a great talent, not to mention a great team guiding and growing with her.

---Again? Again. The YA controversy I touched on here has reignited. The author of the original article published a defense in the WSJ which I found just as tone-deaf as her first piece. Again, she’s complaining that books for children are too dark, that dark books endorse their subject matter, and that the quality of the writing has gone down. Fine, if you think so. I’m not even engaging with that. I did, however, break the first rule of the internet by reading the comments. Though my blood pressure went up, I think I have a better handle on what people think they’re objecting to when they call YA books “too dark.”

I think it all boils down to people’s views on how books should function. A ton of the commenters (I’ll hazard saying they skewed older) lamented that books used to be transportive, that they took children away from the sadness of everyday life to a place where hopes and dreams were realized. (Alternatively, if sad things happened, there was always hope at the end.) Now that the world is so much bleaker than they remember, they thought books should do the same thing for today’s youth. (I don’t think many of this crowd read current YA books or even get beyond the flap copy.)

The second group of commenters was comprised of YA readers and advocates. This bunch refuted that books help children make sense of the world as it is. (They also entertain!) Books about tragedy teach empathy by exposing kids to situations they have been fortunate enough not to encounter. On the other hand, “dark” books help kids (some of whom have been exposed to these horrors) by doing exactly what the first group says: showing a way out and lessening the sense of being alone. Sure, a number of these books are mishandled, but not all adult books are of the same stellar quality. The classics never go away either! Just two hours ago, I popped into a children’s book store to check out the current titles. A little girl came in with her mother asking for iCarly. She left with Little House on the Prairie. (When I was that little girl’s age, I read classic and new books alike. Just check out my list of favorites here and here.)

The bottom line is that the two camps are not so far apart. In children’s literature, now and then, lessons are learned and friends are made. They have their adventures in far-off lands or in their hometowns. The characters grow up in small and big ways. Their dreams are still a very present part of the genre. They may not be the same dreams of fifty years ago or even the same dreams the protagonist had at the beginning of the book, but something is realized in the pages lived. Children are smart enough to know exactly what that is.

...Anyway, I’m heading into the book workshop this week. Hello, 16 hour days! No blogging for a while, but I’ll miss you!

YA in Shades of Gray

I'm working up some new reviews I think you'll like, but in the meantime, I have something else on my mind. There's been a big kerfuffle over The Article That Must Not Be Named in The Wall Street Journal. (I don't want to link to it, but I'm sure you can find it.) Meghan Cox Gordon paints a pretty ugly picture of depraved, sordid tales polluting the minds of young readers. I had a few reactions: Really? REALLY?!? Grrr. Aww.  Wow.

The "aww" and "wow" may look out of place, but you might find yourself feeling similarly once you read the YA community's rebuttal. The hashtag #YAsaves has been cranking out incredible, inspiring stories. Authors, booksellers, librarians, journalists, bloggers, and readers have easily taken apart Gordon's claims. They've written about censorship, parenting, writing, reading, acceptance, history, generational conflict, morality, purpose, intention, and stories for their own sake. There's also some great humor mixed in with the accompanying hashtag #YAkills. I don't need to rehash these brilliant and nuanced reactions (though I do advise setting aside some time for googling), especially because my thoughts on the matter have already been said by someone more eloquent.

In this season of graduation and change, I stumbled across J.K. Rowling's 2008 Commencement address at Harvard. (I loved it like I loved Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk.) She is an immensely talented, empathetic, funny author. Everything I need to combat that misinformed article comes through in her speech. Do yourself a favor and take the time to listen, maybe even learn.

I will say this: Criticizing the content of books (YA especially) is a failure of imagination. It is a failure to see the light, a failure to seek out the light in the darkness, and a failure to realize that some darkness doesn't have light. Children, like adults, will find their way, especially if they are readers. It will be true, and it will be theirs.

YA Highway Road Trip Wednesday #81

Oh, I’ve always wanted to do a YA Highway Road Trip Wednesday, and this one was right up my alley: What is the strangest/weirdest thing you’ve ever researched? So glad you asked! Some of my stories have included:

---breach pregnancies

---50s style wedding dresses

---feeding schedules of baby goats

---Route 66

---hallucinogenic leaves found in the Amazon

---percolator coffee pots 

---shoeing horses

---loom weaving

---graveyard maintenance

Anybody curious about something in particular?

Chirping Crickets

Sorry it’s been as quiet as a library around here! I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my CPC homework so I can send it off to NYC (with best wishes) tomorrow morning. To hold you over until my next post, here’s an excerpt from my publicity assignment that ended up on the cutting room floor:

“Not to be confused with the protagonist of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, Y__ is both Frankenstein and his monster, the result of his own hubris.”

As you can see, I had a lot of fun sinking my teeth into everything. Now, onto Assignment Round 2…Fight!

The PACKET (Alternate Title: ALL CAPS)

The PACKET came today. I have been waiting for the PACKET (uppercase properly conveys my excitement) since I got my CPC acceptance a month ago. I’m going to say it again because I like the way it sounds: PACKET.

Yes, I am a planner. (My to-do list is legendary in my circle of friends.) I also have a knack for packing. (Sorting! Folding clothes precisely! Labeling!) Moving is not my favorite, but I get it done efficiently. (Strong like bull. Lift with knees.) Since I finished my last day of work today, I have a lot of this ahead. However, the PACKET has certain information that I’ve been looking forward to even more than my elaborate cardboard box Jenga games.

I HAVE HOMEWORK! I know I should not be this excited after my Great Escape of 2010, but I love school like Hermoine loves…Well, school. My brain needs puzzles and hypotheticals with a purpose. It craves simulation and useful work. (Check out the Marge Piercy poem on this topic: “To Be of Use”) I could not be happier to dive in, to start down that path marked “career” and not just “job.”

I do learn best by doing, and this is a lot of doing. My pleasure reading might take a hit, but please bear with me. (I plan on some serious Belle-level multi-tasking.) Maybe I’ll even share some fun tidbits with you all.

My Darling, My Darwin

I’ve been a busy little bookworm! Finished four books this past week—a cowboy/city girl romance, a twenty year relationship saga, a quirky YA love triangle, a contemporary slow-build-to-first-love tale—and now just need to write them up. (Let’s not mention that lingering review left over from forever ago.)

Though the plotlines of these four books were all quite different, they had one thing in common: evolution. The characters were forced to see themselves/their partners in a new light to grow, cement, and sustain their initial interest. Since I was thinking about this concept as I wrote the outlines for my upcoming reviews, it was a short leap from evolution and love to evolution and blogging.

I’ve matured so much as a reviewer since I started SLB. My first review was a bit of a rambly mess, even if the sentiments expressed still hold true. Any kind of writing is an exercise, and I was flabby. Now I’ve tightened up a bit. I’m quicker. I’m less emotional/wordy, more analytical/concise. I know the right questions to ask. I definitely feel more in shape. Teaching myself to read on an elliptical might have something to do with it. (OK, so my sense of humor has stayed the same. Let’s just call that a vestigial structure.)

PS. I’m interested to see if anyone can guess which books I read from their brief descriptions. I think the first two out of four are medium-easy if you’ve been following publishing news. Prove me wrong/right?

One Poem, Two Translations

I read Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces in my junior year of college and have returned to it several times since. The novel is so lyrical, it blurs the line between prose and poetry. It’s such a pleasure to lose myself in her words again and again, immersing myself completely before I come up for air.

My copy was used when I purchased it, so it was already marked up in a lovely shade of green ink. I did some dog-earing of my own when the book came into my possession, and it’s funny to see where I overlap with the mysterious first reader. There’s this beautiful quote we both picked out: “Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil.” 

I was reminded of this line when a friend posted a poem he had translated. Now, I’m a French speaker (with a tiny smattering of Italian/Hebrew), so the Spanish poem was all Greek to me. (Funny joke alert: Fugitive Pieces is set in Greece.) That is, until my friend removed the veil. 

Inspired, I did a little digging into the poet and found a second translation. Fascinating! The general direction was the same, but the difference was keen. It all came down to diction. (I have such respect for people who translate novels…What a Herculean task!) See for yourself:

Caminante
by Antonio Machado

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;

caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en la mar.

Translation by my friend Sean:
Traveler, the path is made
by your passage, nothing more;
Traveler, there is no roadway,
for it is made as you journey.
By walking you make the way,
and turning, you look back to see
a path which you will never tread again.
Traveler, there is no roadway,
save the wild sea's wake.

Translation from Wikipedia:

Walker, your footsteps
are the road, and nothing more.
Walker, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
Walking you make the road,
and turning to look behind
you see the path you never
again will step upon.
Walker, there is no road,
only foam trails on the sea.

So, how did they stack up? Which one did you prefer? Why? Any Spanish speakers/studiers in the house that could do better? I’ll weigh in with my thoughts when some comments get going. :)

Foreshadowing + An Extremely Thin Metaphor

As I previously mentioned, I have a 30-minute walk to and from my office. I know this route by rote, having walked it twice every weekday since September. I’ve seen the sights, braved the elements, and made friends with all of the cats in their respective windows. (The ginger one in the art gallery is my favorite.) It’s rare that something surprises me on my commute. I take everything in stride.

Today though, I was stopped short outside of the corner pizza place. There, on the sidewalk in front of me, was the lonely top of an Oreo. “How odd!” I thought. (I have not yet resorted to talking to myself, despite my lack of an iPod.) It was definitely out of the ordinary, but it wasn’t unimaginable. Shrugging it off, I continued on. Not 10 feet later, I found the Oreo’s other half, lying cream side up. I laughed out of sheer delight. How neatly that little arc resolved!

The rest of the walk, I mulled over the split Oreo. That “aha!” moment of discovery was the exact same thing I experience whenever an author is particularly skilled at using foreshadowing. I’ll come across something out of place in a story, something that gives me pause but doesn’t stop me completely. Sometimes, I puzzle it out and other times I blow past it. Maybe I’ll figure out what’s coming or maybe I’ll be completely surprised at what turns up later. Always though, there’s that satisfying resolution that stares me cream-side up in the face. I’m such a sucker for them both — Oreos and tasty plot devices.

Speaking of foreshadowing, I’ve got several reviews up my sleeve. (This is not really foreshadowing, as I’m just going to tell you what’s coming.) Stay tuned for my thoughts on Stephanie Perkins’ Anna and the French Kiss, Andrea Cremer’s Nightshade, and Brenna Yovanoff’s The Replacement.

Elizabeth Gilbert and Her Genius

I didn’t plan on this, but I think SLB is turning into Eat, Pray, Blog for the week. You see, I posted about food and words on Saturday because Elizabeth Gilbert made me hungry. Today, I’m moving on to a more spiritual, loose-goosy topic, again thanks to Ms. Gilbert. (The review—LOVE—will be coming soon.)

Let me backtrack a bit. I completely missed the whole Eat, Pray, Love wave when it came out in 2006. I was in the middle of my own journey, too busy with preparing for college and interning in Israel and saying goodbye to my friends to pick up a nonfiction book. Memoirs weren’t really my thing then. (How the 12 I currently have queued up at the BPL mock me now!) Even though I kept hearing about this book over the years, I never found time or incentive enough to read it myself.

It took me all of college to return to Elizabeth Gilbert. The summer after I graduated (which started me on my current journey), I caught her TED talk online and was completely enthralled by this magnetic, self-deprecating woman. Her talk was the push I needed to read Eat, Pray, Love. Do yourself a favor and spend some time with her. She has a point AND she did her homework. (The Harry Potter reference cemented my state of smitten.)



To recap for the non-watchers (shame on you!), Gilbert details the historical shift from “having a genius” to “being a genius,” particularly how it has impacted artists. The modern notion that “creativity and suffering are somehow inherently linked and artistry in the end will ultimately lead to anguish” has caused a lot of pain. “Being a genius” puts the onus solely on one soul. If that genius artist fails, they can become self-destructive because they believe they are no longer a genius. However, classical societies understood that there was an intermediary, a daemon, a muse, a literal genius that lived with an artist. That creature spirit helped an artist create, so it was not completely the fault of the artist if they did not succeed. There was a partner to shoulder their blame and share in their triumph. This “psychological construct” made allowances for the magic and the large amount of failure essential to the creative process. The artist was the receptacle, the conduit, for the mysterious spark of the divine.

The idea of “having a genius” resonated with me because that is such a part of my process. There are times when I can stumble across an idea and say “Wow, that’d be really nice to put into a story! Someone should write that.” So, I squirrel that thought away in a Word document to wait for the right write moment that may never come. However, some stories sneak up on me and tap me on the shoulder. These ideas don’t let me put them away, the urgent whispers that flow into me from “a distant and unknowable source for distant and unknowable reasons.” I get a voice, a feeling, an opening sentence. If I’m lucky, I get a character. I don’t know where these things come from or why they come to me. They just show up and demand to be written.

When I’m writing, really writing, I feel like I’m channeling. Words spring to life from my fingertips, words that are mine and not mine at the same time. Nothing’s laborious when I’m doing it right. (The intense work of editing is always the same though!) When writing is difficult? Oh, boy! That’s when the fear can set in: “This is so great. I love writing. What a brilliant idea! I’m awesome. Hey…This is getting hard. I can’t find the right…thing. It stopped. I don’t know how to…WHAT IF IT NEVER COMES BACK!?!”

If I believed that this mystical source could dry up and go away, I would be seriously depressed. Over the years though, my genius and I have come to an understanding. I’ve learned that mine has a sense of humor. All I have to do is shower or do dishes or go for a run or try to sleep (read: put myself into a state that doesn’t allow me to write things down) to get it to whisper to me again.

I think we’re friends, my genius and me. I love that between my brain and this little spirit of inspiration, I can accomplish all I need to. So if you happen to see me talking to something that you can’t see, like Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye or Elizabeth Gilbert, just know that I’m either talking to G-d or to my genius.

Stick, Stack, Stuck

It seems counterintuitive, but I know I really like a book when it takes me a long time to write its review. The tyrannical portion of my brain, the part that loves to cross things off of to-do lists, insists that I update my blog in a timely fashion: “You finished the book, so it’s time to post. Find the theme! Analyze! Type! Repeat!” However, my creative mind could care less about a schedule. It forces me to sit with the story for a while, to bide my time until I find a point of access. As of this moment, I’m waiting for a few recent reads to unfold. I can’t wait for them to let me in, but I know I have to be patient.

Blog-wise, I’m struggling with depth and tone. (Am I funny? Lyrical? Indignant?) Bear with me and my growing pains. I’m still finding my voice.

Birthdays and Beginnings

I always say that birthdays are my favorite holiday. I love celebrating the people I love, making a day (or weekend) all about them. I know some people think birthdays are depressing or silly because their only purpose is to mark another year “survived,” but I don’t get it. Why not say “Yay! You made it!” after another trip around the sun? Why not bask unashamed in the warmth of friends and family?

In this unabashed spirit, I wanted to do something a little different to celebrate my 23rd orbit. (I don’t believe that I’m 23 at all. I still read like I’m 13 half of the time!) When I compose posts for this blog, I’m usually wearing my reading hat. I take apart plots and examine beautiful turns of phrase and gush about characters (oh my gosh, I cannot wait to write about Girl Parts), but I also have another hat I like to wear. A secret hat. A hat I can barely talk about above a whisper, one that I don’t even like to admit I own. You see, I’m also a…writer.

I love building plots and turning my own phrases, but it’s kind of embarrassing to say so. I mean, everyone’s a “writer” nowadays. (Please note use of ironic/self-conscious quotes.) But hey, it’s my birthday! I’m celebrating the birth of me, so why not celebrate the birth of some of my stories? 

Let’s talk about opening lines for a minute. My best ones, I’ve found, can’t be forced. I don’t labor endlessly over them. They spring forth unbidden, like Athena. The French have a term for love at first sight that j’adore: “un coup de foudre,” a shock of lightening. That is the creative process for me. A first line comes and strikes me with its electricity. Then, I have to write it to its end.

I want to take a look at two of my favorite first lines that I’ve written. Both of them served my stories in different ways, but they have the same essence to me, that “first love” feeling.  They introduced me to my characters, drawing the story out of them. They told me how to begin.

There was a dog outside the diner.

This sentence doesn’t seem like much at first glance. It’s simple, declarative. I kind of liked that about it when we first “met.” It was so unassuming. Little did I know that in this sentence was my ending. (I love when the beginnings of short stories contain the seeds of the end.) 

A little history: I wrote “OPEN, CLOSED” for a creative writing class. My professor, the insightful Michael Downing, gave us a prompt meant to create a character and a place: A nineteen-year-old girl with a five-year-old daughter works in a place that serves food. The back wall is mirrored, the front wall is windowed. There must be a dog. At the end of the story, she discovers the door of her house is open. 

For this exercise, my classmates had the girl’s lover come back, threatened her child, and even transported her to Tuscany. I wanted something quieter, a story where her old life intrudes on her new one. I set mine in the Texas panhandle, creating a diner during the heyday of Route 66. I had an older graduate from my protagonist’s high school stop into the diner, running from her own problems. The two strike up a tentative truce when Sandy offers her a place to stay.

I found my story, but I didn’t know how to end it. I thought Sandy would take this dog home, this abandoned pregnant thing that mirrored how she was left years ago, but it didn’t fit when I wrote it. The other option did: Sandy tries to take the dog home, but it won’t budge. The dog stays at the diner, at least for another day.

Something blue was the bride, puffed up in a new white dress, wearing old pearls handed down from her mother. In an attempt to distract herself from her mood, she pulled words out of her name. Margaret. It was a game she had played many times, but today only certain combinations of letters jumped out at her. Age, err, mar, mate, rage, tame, regr…No. She was missing an “e.”

“Something Borrowed” was a writer’s block story, something like “take an old adage and work your way around it.” My reluctant bride Margaret appeared with her cousin Theodore. I was pretty affected by the scene in Evening where a woman’s gay best friend proposes to her, and I used this idea to power my story. In a time when it wasn’t OK to openly love men or be an independent woman, it seemed like a perfect out for both of them. Ultimately, Margaret refuses Teddy’s proposal and goes through with her marriage, knowing their “arrangement” won’t fix things. Here’s the end:

From across the white expanse, Teddy offered Margaret his arm. She took one step, then another until she was close enough to thread her hand through the loop of his elbow. Mindful of those waiting, they processed out.

I have a whole Word document filled with opening lines, sentences filled with characters and possibilities. (One that always nudges me is “The color of hunger is purple,” but I’m not sure who it belongs to yet. I like the “bruise” connotations.) Right now, I’m stuck on one and it’s getting long, maybe book-length. I can’t know how it will end, but I do know that births, of stories and of people, are meant to be celebrated.

Review: Gail Carson Levine’s Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly

I read this book and Stephen King’s On Writing back to back. They flowed into each other perfectly, thanks to the ending sentences of King’s book: “Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.”

Gail Carson Levine (who I treated somewhat badly here and wished more from here) redeems herself with this book. If I were younger, Writing Magic would be the perfect push to get me thinking and dreaming and really working out the mechanics of stories. While she is writing for a different audience, GCL echoes many of the concepts King laid out. She usefully backs each lesson up with concrete examples, some from personal experience and some invented for teaching purposes.

One of the instances I was struck by was a character sketch from her novel The Two Princesses of Bamarre. GCL wanted to make her king a remote father (with the purpose of spurring his daughter into a quest) but couldn’t find an authentic way to do it. The solution came through a prop, a book of homilies the man reveres, that came to her out of the blue: In every situation, instead of speaking from his heart, the king tries to apply something from the book, whether or not it is appropriate. The book unlocked the character, creating the emotional distance Levine was looking for when she began. However, the homilies were slightly ridiculous and their silliness rubbed off on the king, ultimately making him sympathetic. GCL reports she had a great time writing the king, and I, as a reader, completely felt that when I went through the novel. He was memorable and complex, all thanks to one perfect detail.

It is clear that Levine’s heart lies with young readers, both because of this book and because of her blog, where she regularly and responsively answers questions about writing. (Heart you, GCL!) Her constant refrain of “Save what you wrote” is touching, and her final lines speak to her writing philosophy:

“Write to nurture yourself. Write to tell us about being you. Write to tell us about being human. There can never be too many stories.  Add to the reservoir.”

It’s a nice counterpoint to the stratified approach King takes, and I can’t really tell which one is more valuable. I’d like to think with a mixture of hope and a healthy dose of self-knowledge, I might be able to get my feet wet and add just a little something to the literary ocean.

Review: Stephen King's On Writing

I’ve been on a “writing books” kick lately. Actually, I’ve been on that kick since I picked up James Wood’s How Fiction Works. I’d read commentaries on specific books for class before, but reading someone else’s book-long interpretation on writing was a revelation. He crystallizes everything I knew abstractly, putting the knowledge into such beautiful prose and backing it up with such excellent examples. (One that really stuck with me was a Maupassant description used to illustrate characterization: “He was a gentleman with red whiskers who always went first through a doorway.” In just one sentence, you know everything you need to know about that man.) Wood is a master writing on masters.

It was with the hope of “more, more!” that I picked up Stephen King’s acclaimed On Writing. I was instantly charmed. I guess I just can’t resist a book with three cheeky forewords. The rest of the narrative unfolds in a similar fashion, layer after good-natured layer: biography, advice, and circumstances surrounding the book. Credentials, common sense, inspiration. The three parts ran like a cycle, each feeding into the other, so that when I finished, I wanted to start again at the beginning.

Seeing how a writer is “born” was fascinating. The way King told his life story was a tutorial before he even began to give advice: funny and insightful with details that were achingly alive. He writes nakedly of an endless struggle with the craft, alternating the rejection letters with the joy. (I was captured by how lovingly he reflected on his influences and his learning process.) His joy was also evident when he wrote his own love story, paying tribute to his wife Tabitha in some of the most romantic passages I have ever read. In the childhood section, I couldn’t help but be tickled by his constant ear woes. It was humanizing to think of this monolithic writer suffering from the same youthful ailments I did. I also marveled at Dave’s Rag, the newspaper he laboriously self-published with his brother, from a modern blogging perspective.

In the actual how-to section, King gets a little controversial in claiming that there are tiers of writers. At the top are the greats. (They are born great and do not need his book.) Below them are the good and the competent. (His book is to help the competent become good.) Bad writers are trapped at the bottom and no amount of effort will ever unstick them. (I wonder where he would place himself. I also wonder how many people who read this book miscategorize themselves.) In the current climate of “everyone can write” and “the weekend novelist,” his words seem harsh and undemocratic, but I don’t think they’re wrong. (Does that make me an elitist?) Personally, I do believe that every published writer has an innate knack for story that they carry with them until it spills out into a book.* It can be honed and practiced, but there is a spark that needs to be present to begin the journey.

Some other things worth mentioning are the writer’s toolbox and the purpose of jealousy. The toolbox is an appealing conceit, and King nestles all the useful tools of the trade inside. Along with plotting, pacing, grammar, dialogue, description, and vocabulary, he includes the feelings of “Oh! I wish I’d written that” and “I could have done better” as essentials, particularly because it means one is reading widely. He believes that reading is the ultimate way a writer learns and grows, and again, I find myself agreeing. Just like learning a language or playing an instrument, a writer has to develop an ear.

I won’t go into the ending, but anyone who’s read this far better plan to buy, borrow, or steal this book. Unequivocal, enthusiastic recommendation of On Writing for anyone who’s looking to write or anyone who just wants to experience a great read. (I read another writing book around the same time as this one. Go here to find the review.)

*I used the term “published” for a litmus, as I do believe a good book will eventually get published.