A Book in Review: This Year You Write Your Novel

This Year You Write Your Novel By: Walter Mosley
Non-fiction: 103 pages
Book Count: 16

First, it did not take me a week and a half to read this 103 page book. I just haven't gotten around to post this before now (for many reasons ranging from illnesses to the power going out.) Anyway this book is meant to help you write a book in a year. One of the major pieces of advice goes exactly against the advice in the last book on this that I read, but still sounds like it would work for a lot of people. This book suggests that you set up a set amount of time that you are going to work on writing each day. Some days you may write the whole time, some you may spend re-reading or staring at the page, but still X minutes each day on writing. This advice sounds like it would work for many people depending on how you like to work, so I have no problem with that as advice its that he thinks the time should be 1 -1 1/2 hours a day in one chunk of time. He notes that that may be hard for anyone with anything else to do with their day, but offers no advice on how to carve out this time. Also, on things that I do not like about this book, after writing the whole story he counts every time you read it as a new draft, even if you make no changes to it! Reading a story doesn't change the words written down for it. You may think up new things about it and should of course read the story start to finish as part of revision, but that isn't a revision. As this book gives only a few pages of advice on how to write a book in a years time. (Including revisions) The rest is mostly basics on writing fiction: point-of view, plot, story development, etc. The end also includes a few paragraphs on trying to get your book published. Over all, if you have never read or written much before this and suddenly get the idea to write a novel, but have no idea how to, then this book is for you. If you are a reader, studied literature, write as a hobby or have read any other book on writing fiction and just are looking for a different writer's tips, you will more likely find this book to be boring.