Friday, May 7, 2010

The Art of War for Writers

Yesterday I bought a book that was recommended for new writers.  Thanks to my free trial of Amazon Prime, and good luck that I live close to one of their major distribution centers, the book was delivered today.  Oh happy day!

As I'm sure you could tell from the title of this post, the book is called The Art of War for Writers, and you guessed it, it's sort of an adaptation of The Art of War by Sun Tzu (which I've never read, but am thinking I probably should).  The author, James Scott Bell, keeps the themes limited to three main subjects: Reconnaissance, Tactics and Strategy.

I've only read a few pages so far, but here's a quote that I already love:

...write what you love with your eyes wide open. 

Another tip that I shall be enforcing on myself is to write a quota of words each week and record what you've written each day.  Quotas can be adjusted as necessary for times when there's a heavy workload at the day job, or there's traveling and things, but by setting quantitative goals, I'll be forcing myself to get my butt in a chair and just write.  To further enforce my goals on myself, I'm going to post my weekly word count here every Friday.

Current count on the novel: 23,780 words

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