On Writing - Writing On

I write all the time: at least 750 words a day, usually more. I like the 750words site because I can babble away about what I had for breakfast, who I saw, how the dog skinned his nose and bled all over the house. And trust me, with only thirty people on the island right now, I don't see many people.

After babbling I can get down to the work of the day, which presently is editing four manuscripts and working on my own book. Which, now that I've written it, appears daunting, but isn't. My book is stalled while I mull over a couple of plot points. I just tossed out 6000 words and a character, now the story can move, but I have a pile of dangling ends to discard or re-weave into the story. Hm.

Reading other people's work is great when I'm stalled; usually I sort out what to write next as part of the process of editing another author.

I recently had to buy a new copy of  Strunk and White -- print and Kindle. Accordingly, my Kindle has suggested that I might want to read Stephen King's "On Writing", Anne Lamont's "Bird by Bird", Nathalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones"... even a recommendation for Peter Elbow's "Writing Without Teachers", which we called Writing Without Elbows" back at my alma mater, The Evergreen State College.

However, I don't think I can read another book on how-to-write -- for now. They're like diet books: how do you lose weight? eat less, eat healthy, exercise more. How do you write? Write. And read. And write. Every day.

But another Eats, Shoots and Leaves will come along and I'll order it up. Come to think of it, I loaned my copy of the book out nine years ago and haven't seen it since... time to download another copy!