Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Between a Book and a Manuscript

Title to be read in the same vein as 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place'. I'm going to blog quick today because I want to actually squeeze in a little bit of time to actually write (imagine that!). But I also just picked up Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass at the library. (Thank you for recommending, Sara!) So now I'm once again torn (as I was with Self-editing for Fiction Writers) whether to read the book first or intersperse reading it with writing. Because what if what I'm writing is addressed in the book as 'what not to do'? What if my afternoon of writing turns out to be a thorough waste of my time, the product of which will removed with a couple clicks of the mouse and the delete button?

It's killing me, I tell you!

P.S. My name is Alyssa Goodnight, and I have a library addiction.
I came home today with three fiction books (all pretty weighty) and a non-fiction writers' manual. How on earth am I going to fit those in with the two books I still have from last week!?! It's a sickness, I tell you.

2 comments:

Sara Hantz said...

If it was me I'd read while writing. You can always fix something as you go. And no way will you feel your writing is a waste of time. The book will help you tighten and improve, you won't need to delete everything.

Alyssa Goodnight said...

Thanks for the advice, guys. I decided to try and go ahead and read while writing...assuming everything goes as planned.