Lessons From a Lifetime of Writing/David Morrell

I don't recall if I've mentioned this before, but I never took a writing class or belonged to a critique group or anything like that. What I did when I decided to be a writer was to read every book about writing I could get my hands on. I haunted the libraries and bookstores looking for them. I subscribed to WRITER'S DIGEST and THE WRITER and found articles on writing in other magazines.

I still read books on writing, because one thing I've learned is that there's always more to learn. Every writer does things differently, but studying their methods and adapting them to what I do has proven valuable on many occasions. For several years I've been hearing about David Morrell's LESSONS FROM A LIFETIME OF WRITING: A NOVELIST LOOKS AT HIS CRAFT. I've read only a couple of Morrell's novels so far, but I liked both of them quite a bit and thought his book on writing would probably be worthwhile.

It certainly is. I have a few reservations about it, but overall it's clearly written, entertaining (Morrell has lots of inside stories about the publishing business to tell, and he pulls no punches and usually names names), and is packed with valuable information about everything from deciding why you want to be a writer in the first place to what to do when your book is remaindered. The sections on developing plots and characters are about as good as anything I've ever read on those subjects. The ideas I gleaned from those sections have already helped me to figure out what was wrong with some projects of mine that have been giving me trouble.

The advice in the section detailing Morrell's extensive, hands-on research methods seemed to me to be of the "Yeah, that's fine if you're writing a book every year or two and getting well paid for it" sort. Most of the writers I know can't afford the time or expense of such diligence. Similarly, a lot of the advice about the writing business seems to be geared to that one-book-a-year ideal, which is what Morrell knows best, of course, having followed that path in his own career. I can't fault him for not writing a book called HOW TO WRITE A BUNCH OF BOOKS REALLY FAST FOR NOT MUCH MONEY (although such a volume might come in handy for some writers). Also -- and Lord, I hate to quibble about this, but I can't help it -- he refers to digests like EQMM and F&SF as pulp magazines, when there hasn't been a true pulp magazine published in the United States for more than thirty years. He also says that fiction digests can be found in the magazine racks in supermarkets. Not in my neck of the woods. I haven't seen an issue of EQMM in a supermarket for at least a decade.

But these are minor objections. Overall I enjoyed this book very much and think it's worthwhile reading for any author, whether they're aspiring or experienced. And it made me even more interested in reading Morrell's fiction.