On Writing

[Eater of Clowns]

I choked this out while trying to describe what it's like to want to write but to only stagnate.

My protagonist is a mild mannered young man who sees himself as a hack in an endeavor he's never actually undertaken. He'll weave a semi autobiographical tale into a lackluster volume that serves to affirm his considerations while defeating the purpose of the story entirely. Along the way obstacles will present themselves that he does not overcome; they are solved by themselves or by other people. Page 1294 will bring readers to the revelation that neither he nor the story has flatlined, which would of course imply that a pulse had at one point existed. Instead, the doctor had hooked the machine up to a fence post then observed it for however long it would take for the reader to plod through the near endless muck of language struggling so hard to be lofty that it fell defeated back to earth and collapsed amongst its dead comrades, where it would shit itself and contribute to the wretched mire of English being presented. Here, the horrified reviewers and publishers of the work discover that in the creation of one of the singularly most deplorable undertakings any of them had experienced, our hero had actually brilliantly created a minute life in each word he had selected. Hundreds of thousands of times they saw birth, struggle, and death. Every sentence a tragedy, every paragraph a genocide. However, by the time any individual was able to choke down the volume to realize this our protagonist had died, never to know that his accomplishment, as well as his crime, marked the most important point in the written word since the first time it had been used. Until now, words gave life. Now, life was given to them.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I like it.

Have you ever read Stephen King's book "On Writing"? It's an excellent book, and by far his best. Octavia Butler also once wrote an amazing article about writing, but I can't find it anymore.

[Eve]

Both fantastic--I have an excerpt from On Writing that I'll post if I can find it (though, likely Cain has the e-book). Butler's article is excellent, though I'm not as much a fan of her books.. at least the one I read.

[Kai]

Check the link to bookchan at the top of either this or the Library forum, there are a bunch of books on writing there, including King's.