The World's Greatest Book

Thanks to K.M. Weiland for shar­ing this excel­lent guest post.

When some­one men­tions the phrase “clas­sic book,” what do you think of? That mam­moth copy of War & Peace you used as a doorstop all semes­ter in your junior year? That pile of Cliff’s Notes you bor­rowed from the library when­ever you had to write book reports? All the black and white movies you opted to watch instead of read­ing the books?

Many of us have neg­a­tive asso­ci­a­tions with clas­sic lit­er­a­ture, thanks to teach­ers who “forced” us to read these old books when we were in less-than-appreciative frames of mind. But it’s time to shake off the neg­a­tiv­ity! Not only are the clas­sics a trea­sure trove of won­der­ful sto­ries about our past, present, and future, they’re also a gold mine of learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for authors.

Ten years ago, I made the com­mit­ment to read all the clas­sics, and so far, I’ve worked my way up through the “H” authors (Hemingway and Homer are on my dig­i­tal shelf at the moment). I can­not even begin to tell you how much I’ve gleaned from this com­mit­ment, both as a per­son and a writer. I got to kick this exper­i­ment into high gear when I was asked to write Jane Eyre: The Writer’s Digest Annotated Classic. Analyzing this mas­ter­piece of lit­er­a­ture, on more than just a super­fi­cial level, taught me more about writ­ing than has any other sin­gle read­ing experience.

Want to join the fun? Here are five rea­sons all authors should be read­ing the clas­sics: Continue read­ing →

So many writ­ers get dis­cour­aged. This stinks. I quit.

Others are over­con­fi­dent. They’ve always had “a gift for words” so they fail to sub­mit their prose to an editor’s scrutiny.

I recently shared an email exchange with an edit­ing client in which I gen­tly pointed out a flaw she’d missed. She thanked me for “not mak­ing her feel like an idiot.”

Learning to write well is like learn­ing to play an instru­ment; it requires prac­tice, deter­mi­na­tion, and a song inside that wants to express itself. Though you’ve been writ­ing and speak­ing your entire life, if you’ve never gone through the process of draft­ing and edit­ing a nar­ra­tive, you’re at the begin­ning of the long steep path to writ­ing well.

If you can com­mu­ni­cate flu­idly and flu­ently on a day-to-day basis, speak elo­quently at meet­ings, and orga­nize emails into cohe­sive para­graphs, it’s no stretch to imag­ine you’re ready to “sit down and ham­mer out a book.” But when your edi­tor takes your “fine work” and blood­ies it up with red ink, it’s just as easy easy to feel dis­cour­aged. All this time I thought I was a good writer! Instead I’ve been adver­tis­ing how incom­pe­tent I am with every email and office memo. Continue read­ing →

Search for “one-sentence para­graph” on the Internet and you’ll mostly find ques­tions about whether writ­ing them is even an accept­able prac­tice. The one-sentence para­graph is not only legal, it’s a use­ful and pow­er­ful lit­er­ary device.

One-sentence para­graphs are com­mon when short pieces of dia­log are being exchanged, but con­sider the effect of ser­ial one-sentence para­graphs in other con­texts. The fol­low­ing excerpt from The Blue Monk describes an ocean cross­ing in a small wooden boat:

Continue read­ing →

A few years ago, I attended a nonfiction-writing work­shop where I was told by the instruc­tor that to qual­ify as non­fic­tion, a work must adhere as strictly to truth as pos­si­ble. But such an edict rests on the naïve assump­tion that truth itself is know­able. The clean, white divid­ing line between fic­tion and non­fic­tion is, itself, a fic­tion. Truth is as neb­u­lous as fantasy.

In the late 1980s and early 90s, I spent a num­ber of years liv­ing aboard a small sail­boat, trav­el­ing through the Bahamas, cross­ing the Atlantic to Gibraltar, and liv­ing among a com­mu­nity of inspir­ing, col­or­ful peo­ple who chose life afloat over ter­res­trial exis­tence. I made sev­eral attempts to write my sto­ries, and finally pub­lished my mem­oir twenty years later.

I began by writ­ing indi­vid­ual sto­ries, one at a time. Eventually, I had a col­lec­tion of almost fifty. I placed them in mostly-chronological order and began to work them into a book with a sin­gle story arc that tied them together. Fifty sto­ries became one big one.

For research, I dug into my past and con­ducted inter­views with peo­ple who were “there,” some of whom I hadn’t spo­ken with for two decades. Opening long-closed doors was scary and exhil­a­rat­ing, and it revealed curi­ous things about the nature of truth. As I asked ques­tions, rem­i­nisced, and lis­tened to the mem­o­ries of those who shared pieces of my adven­ture, I found they remem­bered things I didn’t. I remem­bered things they couldn’t recall. Some of the things we both remem­bered, we remem­bered dif­fer­ently. “No, that was me who said that to you!” If some absolute, fac­tual ver­sion of truth lies beneath the mem­o­ries, per­cep­tions, and other aspects of con­scious­ness that fil­ter real­ity, get­ting at it is a roman­tic fan­tasy. Facts are col­ored by mem­ory, view­ing angle, and time. Truth is an unat­tain­able absolute. Continue read­ing →