A book arrived in the mail yesterday from Amazon. Hardcopy book; real mail. I hope the texture, heft, and aroma of a book will never stop bringing my day to a halt so that I can imbibe the sumptiousness of a new one.
This one is an odd duck of a book. It is a reprint of a book from the late 20s, and it is a Mechanical Turk for plot construction.
I’ve always been skeptical about learn-to-write books and software. Maybe it’s the too-good-to-be-true sense I get for the effort of writing. Maybe it’s the instinctual knowledge that writing is a gifted art. But since I still struggle with unloosening that gift from the packaging and finding the batteries, I rubber-neck these types of books. I’m sure all these books have at least one morsel of value, but the good books are the ones which have more morsels than gristle. I’ve read a few of those.
I think this new book, Plotto by William Wallace Cook, out-gimmicks all the gimmick riddled how-to-write books. The intriguing part, the characteristic which brings the value, though is that it is the grandaddy of such books. It is the how-to-write book that this generation of books forgot existed. I’m looking forward to finding out how this genre read for our grandparents.
So far, it seems genuine and lacking of self-awareness. And complicated.
229 words on day 935
Returning February 22
I’ve been writing but not posting for a couple weeks. It’s been miss-able.
Rather than slog through these last 56 days with nothing to be proud of, I’m going to take a purposeful break. I will be back for the last eight weeks on February 22.