On Writing

I thought it’d be appropriate to finish out the year reading Stephen King’s “memoir of the craft” of writing. The whole reason I wanted to spend the year reading so much is to try and understand the act of writing more thoroughly, and hopefully improve. King is a disciplined man, among the great voracious readers of our day (some of my former professors, and Art Garfunkel also come to mind). He averages 80 to 90 books a year, which makes a goal like mine seem far less ambitious in comparison.

But in addition to reading, he writes like a madman (I’d be happy to adapt just a little of the dedication he speaks of in this book). It shows, too. I still haven’t read one of King’s novels (honest), but some of the movie adaptions have been great, and his tough-love book for writers straight up slaughtered me. (I also never plan to receive a $300,000 advance for my first published book, but unlike me, King probably deserved every penny.)

On Writing has its sad, funny and educational moments. It was #52 in my quest to read a book every week 2009, meaning I am done. Party hats, people.

An archival of every title will be coming soon-ish, right when I figure out how to go about it (it’ll be mostly for my own enjoyment—patting self on the back). 2010 will be slightly different on the writing/reading front. I still plan to read a ton, but I’ll be writing more, and most likely won’t blog about everything I consume. If you’re interested in reading something with me, talk to me here or on Goodreads. Thanks for reading!

How I Became A Famous Novelist

How I Became A Famous Novelist was pretty damn funny. A while back I heard an NPR interview where the author, Steve Hely, talked to Terry Gross about his first novel. I don’t expect what I say will do it justice, so I’ll start with the jacket description:

What Pete Tarslaw wants is simple enough: a realistic amount of fame that will open new avenues of sexual opportunity; the kind of financial comfort that will allow him to spend his life pursuing hobbies such as boating or skeet shooting at his stately home by the ocean or a scenic lake; and perhaps mostly importantly the chance to humiliate his ex-girlfriend at her wedding. This is the story of how he succeeds in getting it all, and what it costs him in the end.

Pete Tarslaw wants to be a famous author. He prefers commerce over art and comes up with the perfect formula for what makes book sell. Excerpts from his resulting novel, The Tornado Ashes Club, are hysterical, as are his run-ins with (fictional) famous authors. The sardonically witty Hely—probably himself unable to decide if literary and popular fiction are separate entities—somehow manages to sum up the entire book publishing industry. Mark my word: anyone interested in books will find something great here.

I’ll end with a quote from this penultimate pick:

“Writing a novel — actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs — is a tremendous pain in the ass. Now that TV’s so good and the Internet is an endless forest of distraction, it’s damn near impossible. That should be taken into account when ranking the all-time greats. Somebody like Charles Dickens, for example, who had nothing to do except eat mutton and attend public hangings, should get very little credit.”

Born Standing Up

Well, things have been a bit crazy lately. It’s the end of the decade, and I can say I reached my goal for the year. I coauthored a novel and read (and just as often, listened to) a book every week. I think I need a vacation.

Today I’ll be posting quickly and carelessly, flying through the last few books I read this year. Then, probably tomorrow, I’ll recap everything and mention my favorites. It’s possible I might make some lists of the best stuff I watched, read and listened to … but if so it’ll come a bit late.

Born Standing Up was #50. Less funny than I imagined it might be, but still enjoyable. In Steve Martin’s most recent memoir, he reflects on his early career as a standup comic and the factors that led him to and away from the difficult occupation. His ideas of what comedy should become were groundbreaking and daring. Researched the profession, he tweaked it to find connections social condition of the day, and began favoring toward personality quips over written jokes. He had difficult parents, worked at Disneyland as a kid, and as you know, learned to play a mean banjo.

As a reader, I began finding myself becoming more interested in personal memoirs this year, especially in the case of audiobooks. This was the last memoir I read, and I hope to read plenty more in the two-thousand-tweens.

Juliet, Naked

This one was about a recluse musician finding his way into the lives of two characters. I enjoyed Juliet, Naked a good deal, though not nearly as much as Slam.

I read somewhere that Nick Hornby wrote this one because so much about the music industry has changed since the nineties, when High Fidelity was published. So I guess I’d been expecting more of a romp through British music nerddom than a story of romance amongst forty-somethings.

Either way, #49 was a good time. We’re almost at the finish line.

3000

(via largeheartedboy)