Guest Blogger: Ann Christopher

Bettye has but one weekend left before going on vacation to get caught up on her manuscript (and this past holiday weekend didn't count, since she was entertaining a houseguest), and much of that will be trying to see what clothes she can still fit her expanding hips into. Would anyone like to take a bet what Bettye will be doing during that three-hour plane ride?

While Bettye agonizes over that fabulous Capri set she has eaten her way out of, here's guest blogger Ann Christopher with some more thoughts on writing.

Y'all know Ann. She took the romance world by storm a year or two ago with not one but two acclaimed romances, Risk and Just About Sex. Her latest, Sweeter Than Revenge, came out in January of this year. If you haven't read an Ann Christopher novel, order one. All those reviews can't be wrong.

Take it away, Ann!

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More Writing Craft Books

by Ann Christopher

Reon Laudat, who is, in fact, as beautiful in person as she is in her pictures, wrote a guest blog on the writing books that have most helped her. I don’t have all the books she mentioned, but I have a lot of them because I, too, am a writing craft book junkie.

Like Reon, I can vouch for the incredible helpfulness of almost any Writer’s Digest Elements of Fiction Writing book you might happen upon. Other favorites of mine? Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, Bickham’s Scene & Structure and The Complete Writer’s Guide to Heroes and Heroines, by Cowden, LaFever and Viders.

And the granddaddy of them all? The one book I think no writer should start writing without? The one book that changed my writing life?

Drum roll, please …

Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

Man, I love that book. Why, you ask?

Well, for one thing, King tells it like it is. Writing is hard, but you can do it, he says. Have courage. You need to either commit to it or not. You make time for it or you don’t. If you’re committed and make time for it, according to King, you need to write every day. Let me repeat that: EVERY DAY. He allows one weekend day off, but that’s it.

That’s what King says, anyway. Do I write every day? During the week, usually, yes. On the weekends, ah … well, no.

Pardon me while I hang my head in shame for a minute.

Where was I? Oh, yes … Why else do I love this book? King tells us, in intimate detail, about his torturous path to publication. He shares the pain. I have a little secret to tell you: he wasn’t born Stephen King, Number One New York Times Bestseller. Who knew?

He worked really, REALLY hard. He endured a lot of rejection. He had setbacks along the way. But … he did it.

And so can we, he says.

So if you’re thinking you want to write something, you’re ready to commit, and you need a little encouragement—someone to point you in the right direction and break that elephant down into bite-sized pieces for you to eat—I highly encourage you to pick up King’s book. Read it. Absorb it. Take it to heart.

And then write. And keep writing. Stephen King says you can do it.

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Thanks, Ann! I love that last sentence. Who are we to argue with Stephen King?