Read from Thursday, July 28th to Saturday, July 30th.
The Secret Miracle; The Novelist's Handbook, edited by Daniel Alarcon, but written by many different authors. I picked up this book the first time I went into the Museum of Unnatural History and 826DC, and it is a book put together by 826National. It is simply a set of many different questions about the writing process that was composed by Daniel Alarcon and sent to many authors, some of whom I know and some of whom I haven't read yet. Paul Auster, Michael Chabon, Jennifer Egan, Stephen King, Mario Vargas Llosa, Colm Toibin, and others participated. It is arranged so that after each question, you can see the variety of responses by all the authors and their (sometimes vastly different) opinions on the topic.
The questions go through the writing process sequentially. There are questions on reading, how many books a month, what are your favorite authors, influences. There are questions on how you get started on writing, things like brainstorming, first drafts, opinions on structure and plot, character development, scene structure. There are questions on how the authors like to write, in what type of setting, and if they base characters on people they know. Then there are questions on the revision process, and how they know when a piece they are working on is done.
It was definitely interesting to see how some of my favorite authors responded to these questions, but I did do a lot of skimming. There is a lot of repetition, both in the questions and in the responses by the authors. Although on almost every topic, you can find the full spectrum of opinions. Three out of five stars.
Eleven books in the month of July.
No comments:
Post a Comment