Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“resting is a more important craft than writing”

Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice by Sarah Fawn Montgomery

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Many of my hobbies are word-based. I read books, I review them, and I write short form narratives. The writing is for fun, something that I’ve reclaimed as enjoyable following academic writing. I have a group of friends that get together and workshop what we’re working on a few times a year – although most of our time is spent visiting as we don’t see each other much outside of these meetups anymore.   My writing has always been in fits and starts. If my brain […]

“Writing, regardless of the end result—whether good or bad, published or not, well reviewed or slammed—means celebrating beauty in an often ugly world.”

The Art of the Memoir by Mary Karr

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CBR 15 Bingo – North America I was gifted this book for my 40th birthday as I had made it known to many of my friends that I started working on my own memoir-ish book. In the time since I started my book, I have stopped and started and stalled many times over so I waited months to crack this open, as it sat taunting me, bursting with the expertise of the lauded memoirist Mary Karr. When I finally got over myself and begrudgingly and […]

The Culprit Behind All the Gastrointestinal Distress

THE EMOTION THESAURUS: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

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For several years, editors and agents have recommended “showing” not “telling” and frequently use the Emotion Thesaurus as a means to show how it’s done. It’s simple really. Instead of saying “She felt surprised,” you look up surprise in the EMOTION THESAURUS and insert “Her mouth fell open and her hand flew to her chest after her fingers touched her parted lips and she gasped.” This, along with thirty other physical manifestations for surprise supposedly show the reader what the character is experiencing. Some border […]

“But so many of us can be soothed by writing: think of how many times you have opened a book, reading one line, and said, “Yes!” And I want to give people that feeling too, of connection, communition

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

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For a long while, I’ve said that I was going to write a book. It has always been the thing I could do if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to actually try because DUH then I would actually have to prove that I could do the thing I so nonchalantly knew I could do. Makes sense, right? See also “fear of failure” and “you can’t fail if you don’t have a plan” and you’ll be downright cozy with some of my life mantras. […]

“Plant a Bomb on the First Page”

The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells by Ben Bova

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The late, great science fiction novelist, Ben Bova (1932-2019) began his life in aeronautics and his incredible planetary fiction shows it. He didn’t cotton with malarky like wormholes and faster-than-light drives. His use of hard (and practical) science distinguished him from other SF writers, and he shared that with us through his own writing experiences in this book. I’d not read many of his short stories, but he reprints his shorter ones in this book to give new writers solid examples of developing character, plot, […]

Those Who Can Do, Can’t Teach

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card

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I’ll admit to some prejudice to reviewing this. While I think Mr. Card is an exceptional writer, I find his homophobic comments hard to take. But this was on my list of books that beginning writers should consume, so I bought a used copy  to learn something. As with other books written over thirty years ago, the section on the writing business at the end is outdated and totally skippable. But the basics of world and story construction are helpful. I found his section on […]



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