Perspectives

I’m reading two books about writing at the moment (what, you don’t keep a book in the bathroom??) and I find the contrast really interesting.

One is Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott, and the other is “You’re not fooling anyone when you take your laptop into a coffee shop” by John Scalzi (nice title).

They are basically polar opposites. Scalzi says up front he doesn’t romanticize his writing, where Bird by Bird is practically a love letter from Lamott to her writing. Scalzi talks about writing as a great job, Lamott compares it to any number of beautiful metaphors but fairly clearly says writing is love and life, not a mere job.

It is really fun to see how two people approach the same thing so very differently, right down to the language they use to explore their craft. Neither are right or wrong in my opinion–in fact, I find a lot of useful tips and motivation in both. Just goes to show how different we are. I recommend both books, incidentally, but my favorite writing manual is still On Writing by King–another perspective all together.

Also

I’m rekindling my self-challenge to read 150 books this year. I hope to keep better records via LibraryThing this year, which I think was the real problem with my goal last year (remembering to record them all, I know I totally lost track around July or so). But this is fun and easy, so hopefully I can do a little better.