Publisher's Synopsis
Writers have called writing everything from curse to cure, art to addiction, passion to purpose. Some called writing a reason to live; others thought it a cause of death. Peeking at Pillars is a collection of quotations about writing from which author Steven Lundin extracts universal truths about writing and reconciles them with his five year experience of writing every day but two. He relates the humor, hopes, fears, and frustrations of the pillars of writing to the modern experience of writing. For example, Lundin uses: -Margaret Atwood's "The wastebasket has evolved for a reason" to explain how Atwood's "write, wad, and toss" is today's "key press, backspace, delete-delete, cut, copy, and paste," showing that failure has gone green -F. Scott Fitzgerald's "First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you," to explain to new writers: "First you write a character, then the character tells his story, then you take the credit" -Virginia Woolf's, "For a woman to write fiction...," to answer what is needed For A Man to Write Fiction - Tolstoy's "All happy families are alike..." to warn writers how easily the first line of novels can assure Your Place in the Grave - P.G. Wodehouse's "I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit" to remind writers how fortunate they are to have computers - "that is, they're fortunate when the damn things work." Peeking at Pillars is for readers and writers, men and women, young and old, and the busy and the bored. Its bite sized portions make it ideal for travel or late night reading.
