Review: Good little penmonkey
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 21, 2011
Is Confessions of a Freelance Penmonkey the most useful book of writing advice I will read all year? Yes it is. You too, if you're smart.When it kicked off with the self-castigating affirmation "I am a writer, and I will finish the s**t that I started" I knew I'd come to the right place. Chuck Wendig's ebook collection of essays on the life and trials of the self-employed writer cuts through the accumulated mythological detritus of the freelancer and tells it like it is.Confessions is crude, irreverent and frequently blunt to the point of cruelty - "Crap Habits of the Highly Ineffective Writer" and "Why You Probably Still Suck as a Writer" are just two of his dilettante deterring screeds, and not even close to the worst for ego-deflating brutality - but it's fair. Professional writing would appear to be a pretty tough gig.Wendig pulls no punches in laying out just how much work goes into writing, editing and publishing, not to mention finding ways to avoid starvation during the long gulf between typing "The End" and commencing the four-continent book-signing tour. For that matter, Confessions will leave you with a pretty clear picture of the effort required to make a living from writing for money. This book conveys practical, no-nonsense advice (albeit in an authorial voice so nonsensical it verges on the drunken. And hilarious). Wendig puts fiction-writing under the microscope from every angle until something catches fire: dialogue, editing, structure, plotting. He looks at action scenes, sex scenes, descriptive passages, purple prose. And rewriting: he's big on the rewriting. He also dishes the grill on the life of the jobbing writer, on subjects such as handling criticism, engaging with clients, getting paid for your work and the perils of being a moron on the internet.The take-home vibe of Confessions is sheer exuberance for the written word. Sure, it's an exuberance tempered with steel-eyed professionalism, relentless determination and a suspicious fascination with hobos, but Wendig's love of his chosen vocation is infectious. How can you not love someone who, in a discussion of caffeine, describes soda as containing sugar of the "we molested corn with science until it yielded cheap sweetness" variety?