Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Helpful Guide to Completing NaNoWriMo

No Plot? No Problem! Revised and Expanded Edition: A Low-stress, High-velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty

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I suspect that many Cannonballers are familiar with National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. For the past 20 years, every November a bunch of writers all over the world dedicate November to completing a 50,000 word novel. Why 50,000? It’s about the size of Fahrenheit 451, Fight Club, The Great Gatsby, and lots of other great books. To “win” NaNoWriMo, you have to write an average of 1,667 words a day. Prior to 2019 I had participated in NaNoWriMo three or four times […]

I want to live in this man’s mind…

The View From The Cheap Seats: Selected Non-Fiction by Neil Gaiman

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For me, reading Neil Gaiman is like giving my brain a hug, and that’s equally as true of his non-fiction writing as it is his fiction books. So The View From The Cheap Seats was welcome respite from real life shenanigans, although it is also responsible for my already hefty to-be-read list mushrooming into something that could now blot out the sun. Comprised of a vast array of non-fiction essays, they’re separated into topics to make it easy to navigate for casual readers and ensuring […]

“Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don’t do it.”

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Pressfield’s book on pursuing creativity is currently less than $6 in its electronic form, so I used my Christmas money  and picked it up on the recommendation of a creative friend. My buddy owns a coffee shop, plays in bands, and generally pursues the finer things in life. A renaissance man! If he said this was worth a read, I figure it was worth a go. I’m glad I did. While there’s probably nothing groundbreaking in this book, the encouragement to create and be yourself […]

I’m a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don’t read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read

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On Writing – 3/5 Stars I am late to the game on this one. I picked it up looking for some potential sections to share with my Dual Enrollment English 12 classes this fall and we begin the school year, and while I think there’s plenty of good material in here for that, the language alone (the casual sexism to boot) makes it tough. But for me the biggest issue with sharing this book with my students is that I just don’t think it would […]



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