Stephen King makes a very good point about writing. To paraphrase: if you don’t find time for reading, you will find writing difficult. He recommends a diet of two to four hours of reading per day.<\/p>\n
I concur resolutely with this advice. As simple and obvious as it appears, his guideline makes sense. Reading someone else’s words is a reminder that the business of turning sentences into stories is not rocket science. If one person writes a book, certainly a second can, and maybe the process is not so tricky. Books also confirm another fact. Rough drafts do find a home after completion.<\/p>\n
My preferences are varied. Here’s a few books I enjoyed this summer:
\n1) On Writing – Stephen King
\n2) Master of the Senate – Robert Caro
\n3) Seven Steps on the Writer’s Path – Nancy Pickard and Lynn Lott
\n4) From Nobodies to Somebodies – Peter Han
\n5) Reading People – Jo-Ellan Dimitrius
\n6) October Dreams – edited by Richard Chizmar and Robert Morrish
\n7) The Devil Wears Prada – Lauren Weisberger
\n8) Logan’s Storm – Ken Wells
\n9) The Interview with a Vampire – Anne Rice
\n10) Power Broker – Robert Caro<\/p>\n
The list is far from exhaustive. Of the rest, I either can’t recommend them, or consider them forgettable. Although in the case of Anne Rice’s Vampire Lestat, I wish I had a fireplace.<\/p>\n
BTW, I shaved the mustache off yesterday. The furry caterpillar haunts my upper lip no more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stephen King makes a very good point about writing. To paraphrase: if you don’t find time for reading, you will find writing difficult. He recommends a diet of two to four hours of reading per day. I concur resolutely with this advice. As simple and obvious as it appears, his guideline makes sense. Reading someone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}