Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew

Steering the Craft by Ursula K. LeGuin

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For the last ten years, I’ve heard  this book on writing by the grand dame of fantasy and science fiction is the book every writer should have in his or her back pocket; however, I found it disappointing. Perhaps if I’d read this book at the start of my writing journey, I’d have found it much more helpful. Plus, it’s largely a workbook with writing exercises on various elements such as punctuation, sentence length, syntax, and other rules of good writing which a beginning creative […]

“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.”

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

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While a lot of writing self-help books are about the basic mechanics and rules of good writing, Mr. Bradbury’s Essays on Creativity are more inspirational. He discusses what he has learned in his fifty years of writing and kindly shares it with us. He doesn’t promote so much as show you the path he’s taken. Of course, since his writing is so stellar, it only makes sense that his How To book would also be well-written and interesting. While he doesn’t make checklists, I do, […]

On the bonnie banks of the Charles River

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

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Bless me, cannonballers, for I have sinned – it’s been months since my last review. But now that it’s January, I find myself back on my bullshit here, attempting a cannonball for the 4th time. After a few half-starts on New Year’s Day, I just devoured Lily King’s Writers & Lovers.  Casey Peabody is a writer barely making ends meet by waiting tables in 1997 Cambridge, Mass. I struggle to sum up the book’s action. It was one of the reasons why it took me […]

Pssst, Cannonballers. Read this book, I think you will like it a lot.

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“If you want the motivation back, you must feed it. Feed it everything. Books, television, movies, paintings, stage plays, real-life experience. Sometimes feeding simply means working, working through nonmotivation, working even when you hate it. We create art for many reasons—wealth, fame, love, admiration—but I find the one thing that produces the best results is desire. When you want the thing you’re creating, the beauty of it will shine through, even if the details aren’t all in order. Desire is the fuel of creators, and […]

You make the art that only you can make. You tell the stories only you can tell.

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Neil Gaiman just gets it, man. This collection of miscellaneous non-fiction writings consists of various speeches, articles, essays, and introductions, and what it turns out to be is sort of a hodge-podge portrait of Gaiman as a writer and reader. Not every essay was of interest to me, and I did skip some of them that covered books I’d never read (and didn’t want spoiled . . . also, the one about Dogsbody Neil tells the reader to skip straight up and then come back […]

This cockadoodie book.

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“As always, the blessed relief of starting, a feeling that was like falling into a hole filled with bright light. As always, the glum knowledge that he would not write as well as he wanted to write. As always the terror of not being able to finish, of accelerating into a brick wall. As always, the marvelous joyful nervy feeling of journey begun.”  “But characters in stories DO NOT just slip away! God takes us when He thinks it’s time and a writer is God […]



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