Lynne Simpson

Currently Playing on iTunes: Wooden Ship, by Uttara-Kuru

You’re going to get the idea that I bought a truckload of books while I was in Canada, and you’d be right. :-) For once, I didn’t over-pack, so I was able to bring home a lot more stuff than I took with me. Just doing my part to support the Canadian economy, y’know.

Among the treasure trove I found at Munro’s in Victoria was Heather Sellers’ Page After Page, which I read in one sitting on the plane back to Atlanta. Once I got home, I reread it and went through the exercises at the end of the chapters. She admonishes readers on at least one occasion that they should return the book to the store if they’re just going to do the exercises in their heads and not on paper. Excellent advice, IMO.

One reason I found this book so worthwhile is that it helped to clarify my thinking about writing and to reinforce some positive steps I’ve taken this year. I started writing a few decades ago, with no real notion of trying to get published. I wrote to make sense of things and to explore what I thought about the world. Sometimes I wrote fiction, but most of the time, I just wrote stuff. Until the last handful of years, nobody was allowed to read anything I wrote. Roommates, family members, and spouses were under strict instructions never to open my notebooks and to burn or shred them if something happened to me. My notebooks didn’t contain any earth-shattering secrets; I just wanted to keep my writing private.

A few years ago, I decided I’d try writing stories and novels for publication. I’m happy with this decision, and we’ll see where it goes. But one unfortunate side effect was that I allowed a lot of ego to creep into a place where it had formerly not been much of a controlling influence.* Ick. Everything I’ve written over the past few years has to be redone from scratch, because I simply can’t stand the smell of it. :-)

That’s where books like Page After Page and its excellent sequel, Chapter After Chapter, come in. If you want to be clearer about how and why you write, I encourage you to buy these books and do the exercises. They may become your new best friends. :-)