Read It As A Writer By Robert W. Walker

If you are reading the ACME blog, I suspect you are a reader, a
writer, someone in between or enjoy being around books and
writings, and you are a life-long learner. This is all to the
good and encouraging. Now if you aspire to write, you must learn
to READ as a Writer reads. This is my best advice to aspiring
writers:

As I said, I suspect you are a life-time reader and learner, and
the best way I know how to write is to READ like a Writer. That
is really, truly study passages that MOVE hell out of you, that
is create a chasm in your soul, make you laugh or cry, send you
leaping to your feet saying, damn, I know how he did that--how he
moved me to fear or terror, how he got under my skin. I know the
key now. Once you SEE the pattern that put ink spots together in
such a crafty manner, Then you begin to learn how another has
raised the hairs on your neck....well then you learn. We none of
us learn a damn thing if we miss the connecive tissue, the
patterns that tie things together, like the relatedness of a
string of paragraphs, and if you can see the connectedness among
a couplle of pages and a handful of paragraphs that make you gasp
for air...shout aloud, put the book out of the house, throw the
book across the room (all of which my readers have told me I've
moved them to do), well then you are READING like a WRITER.

A truly good thing for anyone who aspires to write. Check out
the last chapter of many How To Write books and it will be
covering How to Read like a Writer. Of course, you may already
know this, but it is one of those lessons we need always to
remind ourselves of and practice. Then you also gotta write,
write, write, then rewrte, rewrite, rewrite...and know that
Writing is Rewriting. Those moments in which me move hell outta
our readers do not come cheaply. It is extremely rare that so
much as a single page of a novel of mine can be left
untouched-up. Happens once in a blue moon after all these years
but rarely does a page not beg for rewrite, and in the rewriting
many of my best twists, turns, shocks, grinds, and ideas come
into play, so don't fear the rewrite and don't take the attitude
that rewriting is work. Rewriting is like detailing a car. It's
all part of the joy of writing, and honestly, I find more joy in
the rewrite than inthe original script.

Happy and successful wrting and sellin' it to yous all --

Rob Walker
www.RobertWWalkerBooks.com
preorder City of the Absent now on Amazon.com