Here’s a good article about the craft of writing: Business Musings: Punctuation, Voice, And Control.
I don’t recommend craft articles here very often, probably because most of them that I read aren’t really that good. Or they cover the basics, and I’m just not there anymore when it comes to my fiction.
I have plenty left to learn, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve been writing fiction for 30 years now. It takes something a little better than average to get my attention. Rusch always writes craft articles that catch my attention. She is exceedingly good at distilling knowledge into something a writer can learn from.
This one caught my attention not because of the content—I was kind of just nodding my head in agreement all the way to the end—but because of the implications of it needing to be written.
So, how many writers of fiction just do not read fiction? Or read so little that they haven’t really learned anything from it?
I mean, if you’re a reader, you should know everything that article has to teach you, if only because you’ve seen it done so many times through your reading. Seriously!
Come on.
But the comments on the article were such that I honestly wonder. I guess I should expect that some writers write for reasons other than a love of reading, but it’s a little tough for me to understand.
I can’t imagine wanting to write if I didn’t love to read.
So maybe I learned something new from that article too: that there are a lot of writers out there that just don’t care about reading.
I kind of hope I never read one of them.
:D