If you can't read and write you can't think. Your thoughts are dispersed if you don't know how to read and write. You've got to be able to look at your thoughts on paper and discover what a fool you were.
Useful Books for Writers
This is a fantastic book if you are interested in writing fiction. Stephen King offers very useful and friendly guidance for your writing. This is not aimed primarily at writers of horror fiction, which may be the assumption considering the author's own work in the genre. Instead, King's advice should really appeal to anyone who is interested in telling a story and interested in telling it well. The content here is easy to digest, but seeks to challenge writers to improve their habits and their craft.. This book may not be as advanced as John Gardner's The Art of Fiction, but King's own experience as a prolific story teller help distinguish this book from anything else that is available.
This book offers an insightful perspective on how to use the palette of one's life as the foundation for fictional creations. If you really think about it, after all, everything you write must be somehow based in reality, even if it is the most imaginative or speculative type of storytelling. I found Hemley to be a knowledgeable and transparent guide who isn't at all hesitant to offer up the personal details of his own existence in order to help us think about ours. The book includes well organized chapters that cover everything from the writing process (keeping journals) to imposing fictional order on the chaos of reality. There is a fantastic chapter on legal and ethical concerns that some recent and well known writers of "non-fiction" should have read before they published their books. Hemley also includes some sample fiction from various contemporary writers, including a couple of his own stories that were inspired by his own reality.
This is a 250 page volume of almost entirely exercises. Within these pages readers will find challenges that will stretch the abilities of beginners and advanced writers alike. If nothing else, the prompts and games (yes games) are bound to encourage new strategies and playfulness in writers who may have grown too comfortable with existing habits. Definitely something that you can carry around and defer to if you ever get a case of writer's block. I would liken this book to a child's sand box full of possibilities for imaginations that are willing to pick up the basic tools of the trade and dig.