Thread by @raulpacheco

I need a hashtag to be able to find all my reading notes of the books I buy and read. So this is a #RPVBooks thread on Verlyn Klinkenborg’s “Several short sentences about writing” (book cover in the photo attached to this tweet).

An incredible book, extraordinary.

The core of Klinkenborg’s approach can be summarized as follows:

1) all the writing advice you read is regimented and can feel asfixiating
2) focusing on the sentence and the paragraph as the core units of writing allows you to break free from that feeling of constraint

3) writing can be fostered, encouraged, motivated and unleashed (my words) by NOTICING.

Klinkenborg’s approach is different from Stephen King, Anne Lamott, Eudora Welty and many other writers who write about writing.

Klinkenborg suggests that noticing and deconstructing …

… are the core abilities that a writer should have. In doing so, Klinkenborg suggests that writing will require you to REVISE A LOT.

Personally, I am not the kind of writer who can write a sentence, deconstruct it, revise it, make it perfect and then move on to the next one.

I blurt out the words and then revise them. But Klinklenborg’s approach is nice and useful. What makes “Several Short Sentences About Writing” so fun and easy to read is that yes, it’s written in the form of several short sentences about writing.

Bottom line: 10/10 recommend.