January 20, 2010
I read the book How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N Frey over the past two days. It was a gift a year or two ago, and I had not yet read it.
I didn’t have high hopes for the book, as my initial impressions of it were of a ‘popular’ novel-writing guide, but I was pleasantly surprised that it had a lot of good things to say. Although in general I consider myself more an artistic novelist than a mere slogger of books, as I pointed out in my discussion of my aesthetic, there is something fundamentally appealing in popular novels, and knowing what it is and how to recreate it can only help, no matter my artistic ambition.
So, like other sources of writing advice I go to, this book helped me focus my desire to write, to guide my thinking just a little bit, and gave me a bit of encouragement that I am not completely deluded. However, I have now picked up John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction for a reminder of the true artistry that novels can reach for, that I want to reach for.
Filed under Thoughts, Writing.
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