On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a re-read for me (from before I started keeping a list), and I found King's advice, style, and experience with writing to be everything one could hope for. Direct, efficient, and validated by success. While he does speak to the use of crude language in your writing, and when you should and shouldn't use it, he sure uses a lot of it himself. In his quest to be true to himself as a character, he drops a lot of f-bombs and other colorful terms. This tells me that his true self is crass and unfiltered, which is a great way to be true to a character, but this is nonfiction. I'm less interested in the character of Stephen King, and more interested in his content, so I don't know if all of that was necessary, but whatever. So I dropped a star because I can't recommend this book to all audiences of aspiring authors, but if you can handle the adult content and want to be a better creative writer, this is a great read.

You Can Write a Mystery by Gillian Roberts

You Can Write a Mystery by Gillian Roberts
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I struggle with nonfiction. It is sad but true. This is a great book that covers not only the basics of writing a mystery, but the basics of writing any fiction book. And it handles that huge task in around 120 pages! What more could you ask for? It was well written, concise, and the tips were perfect for the budding author. And yet it took me somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 weeks for me to finish it! Something about nonfiction just doesn't hold my attention, even when it is a topic I'm interested in, it is well done, and gets straight to the point. I find my mind wandering after half a page, or even after a paragraph or two. It was ridiculous. I've encountered this before with other books and had suspicions that the books were boring or the content was off, but this is empirical evidence that it is all me. This was a great book and I recommend it highly. I also need to get some medication or something...