Rogers, Bruce Holland: Word Work
Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer
Author: Bruce Holland Rogers
Genre: Writing/Self-Help
Pages: 247
Final Thoughts: Good stuff in here.
Bruce Holland Rogers has compiled articles written for Speculations magazine into this book on living the writer's life, which came highly recommended to me by calico_reaction. You can read her review here. He's got some great ideas and suggestions for different approaches to writing and its lifestyle, ways to counteract common troubles. Some suggestions are right up my alley - others I cringed just reading about, but the whole idea is that everyone works differently, so lots of things are covered, at least in passing suggestion.
Enough things struck me as important to remember that I read with highlighter in hand for a while, though I usually only read a chapter or two a day in an effort both not to overload myself with information and to give myself a chance to attend to other duties in the meanwhile.
Some of the points that particularly struck me:
- The fears that get to me the most are akin to dissertation fears. Students facing the necessary first sentence of a dissertation know that the limitless potential they've had as students is now going to be reduced to the limited reality of what they actually write. It's the desire to prolong the feeling of potential magnificence that keeps them from committing the first inadequate, disillusioning line.
- The... motivations that I have examined may be about the life we make for ourselves with our accomplishments. A practice, on the other hand, is about the life we make moment by moment, regardless of whether we accomplish anything or not.
- Our broader cultural neighborhood is at least partly hostile to our writing ambitions. To nonwriters, we're pretty weird. We spend hours in the company of imaginary people. We're fussy about aspects of craft that most readers won't even notice. Each of us makes less money than we would if we'd brought the same passion to, say, real estate. How we feel about a day's work may have nothing to do with whether it's any good or not, so we can't even say with confidence whether we've had a good day even if everything seemed to go well.
Glad I read it. I'll keep it on hand for inspiration when things aren't going very well and strategies to keep things rolling when they're going swimmingly. Thanks, calico_reaction. :)
Book #12