Customer Reviews

Advice to Writers: A Compendium of Quotes, Anecdotes, and Writerly Wisdom from a Dazzling Array of Literary Lights

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Advice to Writers is Jon Winokur's finest book -- and that's saying something. Its already pulled me out of writer's block several times. I mean, its not exactly a self-help book, but the damn thing WORKS.

As a writer who suffers from chronic indolence, I'm keeping this book on my bedside table (since I'm indolent I work in bed) -- it makes me WANT to write.

Practical usage aside, its big fun, too. No one else has Winokur's delicious eye for quotes and their juxtapositions. This lovely book is caviar; all other "advice to writer" books are neurasthenic by comparison.

Bravo, Mr. Winokur, and thank you! When's the next one?

The book is a delightful mix of thoughtful, irreverent, cynical and joyful quotes, interspersed with occasional brief advice that is specific enough to be helpful. Well done!

Winokur has gathered advice on writing from more than 400 bibliophiles and categorized their recommendations into 36 sections. Most entries are short quotations. (For categories, click on Table of Contents in the left-hand column of this page.) Writers will love turning to the sections on agents, occupational hazards or punctuation to see what writers and other bookpeople have said about them.

Jon Winokur is an author and bibliophile who obviously loves his work.

As the author of 113 books (including revisions and foreign-language editions) and over 500 magazine articles, I recommend this book to writers. DanPoynter@ParaPublishing.com.

Books about writing are usually self-important and affected. This one isn't.

Winokur dissects the writer's life and shows that it isn't all art and inspiration. He covers the nuts and bolts of publshing-from punctuation and plagiarism to literary prizes. But he also has a section on the creative process. Advice to Writers includes just about every kind of writer--journalists, humorists, historians, and sports writers--who all share their pithy wisdom on the business and craft of writing.

As a writer and teacher of creative nonfiction, I hunger for a glimpse into the interior lives of authors. Do they feel as out of control or depressed as I sometimes do when facing a huge project? Do they suffer from writer's envy or writer's block? Finally, do they drink as much as I do?

Winokur's book is satisfying and addictive. By offering actual quotes from working writers, he manages to show the amazing breadth and depth of the torturous creative experience. Writing is more of a chronic condition than a profession: think of Advice to Writers as a self-help mental health book for the ink-stained wretches of the world.

For those of us familiar with Mr Winokur's literary tourbooks, Advice To Writers represents a welcome refuge and a haven of information regarding the literary bugaboos we all experience in our efforts to create a representative sampling of intelligence that would have value, in some form or fashion, to someone else - anyone else - for that matter.

And isn't it wonderful to know that our most frustrating issues were experienced by and dealt with by our most astonishing and enduring literary heroes.

Thanks to Mr. Winokur for providing us with the looking glass as we hopefully learn through the inciteful pain and suffering of the "literary lights" we so hope to emulate.

Jon Winokur, author of the divinely wicked Portable Curmudgeon, has compiled what amounts to the ultimate literary seminar for an aspiring writer. It's filled with advice from Russell Banks, Kurt Vonnegut, Peter Mayle and all the other literary stars you search for on Amazon.com and as a bonus you get Winokur's trademark wit. A perfect gift for all the liberal arts major graduates on your list.

I loved this book. It made me want to sit down and write the Great American Novel.

I suppose I should have expected that, in a book made up of other people's words, there would not be a lot of originality. Still, I was hoping for a book that did more than skim the surface of the issues facing a writer. The section on genres was particularly weak, which is a pity. Best to go back to the classics: Strunk & White, EM Forster, John Gardner. Disappointing.

"You can't really write a romance now, it has been ceded to the bargain-basement depths of literature.--Paul Monette." That's an example of the "expert" advice to be found in this book, and the only tidbit to address the largest and most lucrative genre in paperback fiction. Who IS Paul Monette? Has he sold more romance novels than Nora Roberts or Julie Garwood? If he belongs to Winokur's "dazzling array of literary lights" then I'm afraid it's pretty dim. The author's biases are clear, and who needs advice from someone like that? Try "A Writer's Time" by Ken Atchity.