Short and to-the-point!

I have never read Walter Mosley's fiction; I picked this up from a Little Library near my house because the title called to me. What a great title! The book is worth having on your shelf for the title alone. Such solid encouragement. This little book believes in me. This year. This year I write my novel. Full stop.

You can find Mosley's advice pretty much everywhere else. I read Lamott's "Bird by Bird" and King's "On Writing" recently and they say the same stuff, but with memoir woven in. Mosley, though, gives nothing but writing advice and examples to back up that advice. That's it.

The most useful aspect of this book for me was how strict Mosley is with his writing schedule. And at every step on the way to writing your novel, he reminds you to be strict about your writing schedule. I'm not certain that kind of discipline will work for every writer, but I'm certain every writer who is that disciplined will write a novel.

Other things I learned from Mosley:

- "Wait until the book is finished before making a judgment on its content" (13)
- "If a man is a lion, leave him that way. Don't make him into a wall or a wind too" (39)
- "Plot is the structure of revelation" (56)
- "...decide whether or not this document is worth the next nine months of your life... What you have to decide is whether the novel has a soul or not" (77)
- "The only details that should be put in any description are those that advance the story or our understanding of the character" (84) -- he gives a great example here of a fly buzzing detail that manifests a character's anxiety
- "read your book out loud... yes, the whole book" (94)

And many more. Nothing too outstanding here, but worth the quick read that it is!