100 Years of Assistance in Playing the Ponies
Frank Deford has an interesting piece on SI.com about the 100th anniversary of the Daily Racing Form printing the esoteric and confusing past performance statistics for horse races. Deford writes “The scales fall from your eyes when you learn to read past performances. There are various signposts in your youth which speak to growing up:…
continue readingMore on Mr. Koch
After my rant yesterday about all the formatting in The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop by Stephen Koch, a thoughtful and considerate reader thought I overreacted and that there is a tremendous amount of good material in the book. While I still do think the formatting and emphasis on emphasis is overkill, the reader’s polite comment…
continue readingA Couple of Cool Blogs
You know, maybe I was too hard on Mr. Koch and his formatting intensive book The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop in my post earlier today. I mean, after all, who am I? He ran a prestigious program for decades, he’s published two novels and at least three nonfiction books. Meanwhile, I’m a nobody sitting here…
continue readingAnother Sleepy Friday
I’m exhausted, suffering from allergy attacks and hungover from Nyquil, and it seems everyone else is too. So it’s another quiet day in the book world. If I see anything interesting today, or if I get otherwise inspired, I’ll post something up. But if I don’t talk to you, be sure to have a good…
continue readingThe Difference Between Writer and Author
Writer’s Digest has a cool quote on the difference between writers and authors: “Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”–Colette
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