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learn writing with Uncle Jim
Jim Macdonald is by all accounts an excellent teacher, and now there's this thread he started at the AbsoluteWrite on-line forum. It looks to me very worthwhile. Lots of solid advice, including a spattering of useful laws, ala:
Watt-Evans' Law: There is no idea so brilliant that a sufficiently ham-handed writer can't make an unreadable story out of it.Feist's Corollary to Watt-Evans' Law: There is no idea so stupid that a sufficiently talented writer can't make a readable story out of it.
My only quibble with Uncle Jim (actually, I don't know much about him -- I may be older than he is, but I'll call him Uncle anyway; I also answer to Auntie Ro) is his ten pages or about 2,500 words a day. That's just not the way some people work. Me included. But he knows that; he starts out with a proviso that says, basically, what any honest teacher of writing must say (and I paraphrase): take what works for you and leave the rest.
February 21, 2004 04:25 PM
Comments
The most useful law for very new writers is Jim's own. Yog's law: Money flows toward the writer.
Jim is Yog Sysop on sff.net, for reasons which escape me at the moment.
Posted by: Steph at February 23, 2004 06:51 AM
Wow...!
Just spent a good hour mesmerized in front of the computer, devouring the tips given by Uncle Jim. Thanks for the link, Sara!
C.
Posted by: Chris at February 24, 2004 06:46 AM