on writing

Reading a new book now about writing by John Gardner called The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. It's a nice switch from the usual writing books because the first half of the book is actually about literature and fiction that already exists. Gardner explores what works in fiction, and why doing "what they tell you to" in writing seminars doesn't always work. I like the fact that he says "suchandsuch is a general rule. Now here's some classics that broke that rule, and here's why they succeeded." I was getting a bit discouraged in my writing, due in part I think to my attempt to help myself by reading books on writing. The end result was me feeling like I was doing too many things wrong and couldn't fix them all at once.

Anyway this is just a blurb, probably edit later and add more...