Like a monstrous snail, a toilet slides into a living room on a track of wet, demanding to be loved.
It is impossible, and we tender our sincerest regrets. …

From “With Sincerest Regrets,” Russell Edson

I came late to “Writing Down the Bones,” by Natalie Goldberg (1986)–just this year, in fact. I was enchanted by it, edified and refreshed by its joy and candor. (Read it.)

One of the many things for which I am grateful to Natalie is introducing me to Russell Edson’s poetry. (Click above to read the rest of the poem on a site that has permission to reprint it.) Its allusions and imagery are bizarre, yet weirdly intimate.

And unforgettable.

Do you want your book, your prose, to be unforgettable? Find and read unforgettable writing. Think about what makes it special. Talk about it. Adopt its ideas, if only for an exercise, and write some of your own, “in the style of” the author.

Your uniqueness is not in question. Own it. Learn to express it. Make your writing unforgettable.

If you’d like the hard-copy version of “Joel’s BookProgram™: The Simple Secret To Writing A Non-Fiction Book In 30 Days Or Less, At 1 Hour/Day!” just click on the title to order it!

And if you want to talk to me about writing your book, email me for a free 15-minute consultation.

Despite the fact that Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson’s latest book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, wasn’t released until this week, it has still managed to generate much pre-publication discussion about the future of the digital economy. Anderson found himself enmeshed in a pre-publication plagiarism scandal two weeks ago when the Virginia Quarterly Review found that some passages in the book directly matched Wikipedia entries. (Anderson quickly apologized, blaming inaccurate citing and overall carelessness.)

Then, of course, there’s the actual content of the book, which has been received by journalists and business-minded folks in decidedly polarizing ways. Malcolm Gladwell unleashed a scathing review of Free in last week’s New Yorker, scolding Anderson for adhering to the freeconomy as an “iron law” and writing, “The only iron law here is the one too obvious to write a book about, which is that the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws.” (Plenty of responses followed.)

But for Anderson, Free is indeed the ultimate destiny of our economy. “Sooner or later every company is going to have to figure out how to use Free or compete with Free, one way or another,” he writes in the beginning of the book. This assertion will probably look depressingly familiar to journalists who’ve watched their traditional business models fall apart in the wild west of the web, where “free” is the gold standard.  Read more

My focus is non-fiction, and especially the kind that serves the needs of individual professionals–”solepreneurs.” But I encounter many people who want to write fiction. If you are such a person, I highly recommend you sign up for the ezine of Randy Ingermanson, creator of the “Snowflake Method” for writing fiction. Follow the link in this blurb:

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, “the
Snowflake Guy,” publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing
E-zine, with more than 16,000 readers, every month. If
you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction,
AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND
have FUN doing it, visit
http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing
and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.