I've come to the conclusion that buying and reading "how to write" books is something that one does in lieu of actually writing, as a sort of hardcore procrastination thing. I've read enough of these things over the years to realize that the vast majority of them (assuming that they're even remotely legit and not the worse-than-useless, predatory, snake oil, placebo horseshit that at least a couple of the ones I've read have turned out to be [i.e. pretty much any "how to write" book that
***GUARANTEES*** anything, especially as a selling point, is almost assuredly going to be full of the worst sort of shit]) basically all say pretty much the same things, over and over, as follows:
"If you're going to write, then
fucking DO IT, already. A writer is someone who writes, no more and no less. There is no surefire, set in stone, magic bullet way to go about it, and there is never going to be, and anybody who tells you otherwise is a liar. You're going to have to come up with your own routine and stick to it, with 'stick to it' being the operative phrase there. But here is what I, the author of this particular 'how to write' book, have found works for me, which may or may not work for you. These are the methods that I use. Oh, and do yourself the service of reading
Strunk and White, if absolutely nothing else."
That is what most of the better "how to write" books I've read over the years have boiled down to, at any rate. Anything beyond that is mostly froufrou fluff.
I am certainly not going to say
NEVER read any "how to write" books, mind you, because the best of them also tend to double as a memoir of sorts for the author (
On Writing by Stephen King is one good example of that, and I would recommend that one just for that reason alone [well, not
just for that reason alone, as he gives pretty good advice, too]). And if you've
never read one before, it probably won't hurt to read one or two of them, because you'll probably glean at least a
little something from the first one or two that you read. However, just realize that there's no point to keep on reading them, incessantly, hoping that you're eventually going to find
The One Book™ that holds all of the esoteric secrets and arcane magics, not found in any of the others, that will turn you into a writer, if you are not already a writer, because you're never going to find that. Believe me, as I speak from experience, at least in that regard.
Also, with all of the above said, I
totally already bought
this bundle at the $15 level a week and a half ago, even so. ¬_¬
(EDIT copy/pasted from a subsequent comment made underneath the above, already copy/pasted FB post, edited like the above for formatting and added URLs and such)
I went and dug out Book 1 (out of 9, very soon to be 10, 200 college-ruled pages each) of the
journals I have written between 2014 and today, and I found the entry in which I wrote about
The Elements of Style (and also
Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande), and just for the hell of it, I am going to transcribe that entry here
(and then copy paste it into that Dreamwidth entry linked below):
---
Tuesday, January 28, 2014, 8:55am
"I finished reading Dorothea Brande's
Becoming a Writer yesterday. I was able to glean some useful bits from it. The suggestion to find some 'wordless' recreation seemed like it might be especially helpful. I could easily do that with video games, though I'd have to ignore my favorite genres like RPGs, which are usually quite wordy, in favor of something like puzzle games, which aren't among those I care to play if left to my own devices.
"After finishing
Becoming a Writer, I went back to
The Elements of Style, which I'd set aside before because I'd found my interest in it dwindling. The reason for that is because most of what I was reading was stuff that I already knew, stuff that I'd already been taught in elementary school and beyond, stuff that I now consider to be second nature. But then, I got to chapter IV, 'Words and Expressions Commonly Misused,' and I couldn't help but smile, nod my head, and say to myself, 'Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.'
"In my LiveJournal, long before I'd ever even heard of this book, I started writing a series of posts that I eventually went back and tagged '
linguistic pet peeves.' Chapter IV of Mr. Strunk's book reads exactly like a collection of posts I could have made in my LJ. Some of them, in fact, are shared between the two, such as '
care less' and '
literally.' There are some, though, in Mr. Strunk's list that even I wouldn't consider to be misuses in today's linguistic climate. I suppose this is because they have been
so universally misused and abused between the early 20th century and now that nobody considers them to be misuses any longer. The power of 'dynamic language,' I suppose, though I find myself agreeing with Mr. Strunk, which I will quote here in a generalized way:
"'The use of [misused term] has its defenders; they argue that any usage that achieves currency becomes valid automatically. This, they say, is the way the language is formed. It is and it isn't. An expression sometimes merely enjoys a vogue, much as an article of apparel does. [Misused term] has long been widely misused by the illiterate; lately it has been taken up by the knowing and the well-informed, who find it catchy, or liberating, and who use it as though they were slumming. If every word or device that achieved currency were immediately authenticated simply on the ground of popularity, the language would be as chaotic as a ball game with no foul lines.'"Elsewhere, in a different example, he says this:
"'Although the word in its new, free-floating capacity may be pleasurable and even useful to many, it offends the ear of many others, who do not like to see words dulled or eroded, particularly when the erosion leads to ambiguity, softness, or nonsense.'"Many such words and terms are misused when writers are, as Mr. Strunk says,
'groping toward imagined elegance.' This is why I, for example, so strongly object to the use of '
begs the question' as an erroneous substitute for 'raises the question.' People say things like that because they think it makes them seem smarter when, in fact, the exact opposite is true. For me, it is the misuse and abuse of language for the purpose of 'putting on airs' that is the most offensive. I can tolerate genuine mistakes, but when people do this shit for
pedantic purposes, that's when it's nails on chalkboard.
"Even though we are separated by almost a century and by an English language that has indeed changed quite a bit during that time, I still find Mr. Strunk to be a kindred spirit in our shared war against the deterioration of that language, ultimately on the losing side though we may be. It sucks, I know, but what can you do?"
(/EDIT)
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