Friday, March 23, 2007

On Reading to Write...

Tom Ashbrooke interviewed Francine Prose, novelist, essayist and literary critic. She's taught literature and writing for more than twenty years and is the author of fourteen books of fiction including "A Changed Man" and "Blue Angel." Her new book is "Reading Like A Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want to Write Them."

Prose has some very simple yet lucid thoughts on how to become a good writer. Seems like plain commomn sense to me. Here are a couple of quotes from her book--

"Instead of looking at works and point out what is wrong with them, why not look at brilliant works and see how they did it."
"Writing can not be taught but learned, and most writers including myself learned by reading."
"Like most, maybe all, writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, from books."

Many many more fascinating thoughts in her book, "Reading Like A Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want to Write Them."

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