Writing.Com General Discussion

I took a stab at answering this a few days ago, but WDC's been logging me out everytime I write a long answer. Must be a sign.

I noticed the books are very dated. I'm sure the info is good, but most of King's book wasn't concise advice and you can get it in an article on the internet nowadays.

The basic problem I have with books is when it comes to information, they've been supplanted by the internet. An article could be made of the top 10 articles or sites to read to learn all that stuff. For free.

Perhaps I live with technology differently than most writers. As a technologist, I quit using technical reference books when search engines solved my problems. I've found the same thing to be true for writing. One must learn to discern bad advice from good, but that's true in all subjects.

To further that point, I wrote the internet's only Writer's FAQ by asking every common question I saw on writer's forums into Google and vetting the links. So much has been written already, that one need not crack a book to break into the craft*.

*You do need to read books, just not ones on writing books :)