Reading craft books

Hi Everyone,

Today, I paused my writing to finish a craft book I’d been reading. I’ve read it twice before but the author is giving a talk on it tomorrow, so I decided to read it again. It’s The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface by Donald Maass. I’ve mentioned this book before and listed it in my favorite craft books section. It has 34 exercises to help you bring out emotion in your story. You should read it.

I love craft books. I like to take time out of writing to read them, to see the opinions of experts, those who’ve studied the craft for years. I also like reading the excerpts in them. I often read the novels in the examples. I like to think of me as being a different person, a different writer, after I’ve finished one. Joanne 2.0

Not all the lessons in the craft books are useful. It depends on the project, your mindset when reading it and where you are on your writing journey. Some lessons are redundant, or too advanced or just not applicable for your project right now. So reading them more than once is useful because my problems and questions today are not going to be my questions tomorrow.

I did reread my work from yesterday and tinker with a few sentences because I like to make a habit of touching my work everyday, even if that’s just changing one word. It keeps the story fresh in my mind and keeps me interested in it and the characters.

I’ll be back to writing tomorrow.

See you then,

Joanne