Lately, I’ve taken to combining a pair of books and I’ve found the reading experience doubly enlightening and enjoyable.
On Writing, by Stephen King.
Draft No. 4, On the Writing Process, by John McPhee.
One of my writer friends told me about the Stephen King book. I found the McPhee book in an independent bookstore in the touristy, artsy-crafty town of New Hope PA.
I enjoyed reading both books. Reading about writing, I found, was just as enjoyable as reading a good story by writers I religiously follow. And I, probably and inadvertently, learned a few things about the craft along the way.
One writes fiction. The other non-fiction. One is, in my opinion, a stay-at-home writer, at least relatively. The other is a man who has seen a heck of a lot of the world and done very interesting things, including teaching writing. One creates a world and gives birth to characters in his imagination. The other visits a spot on our planet and meets and interviews the characters who live there. Both writers then commit their characters, one set observed in an imagined world, one set observed with eyeballs conveying images into the brain, into ink. And on the pages, both sets of characters, if you were to prick their fingers with a needle, would bleed red blood.
I rate both books five stars.