Marcia Golub, I'd Rather Be Writing

I've read or skimmed several books about writing over the last few years and found that most of them led to a paralyzing depression, those sit-down-and-outline-the-whole-story-and-write-ten-pages-about-each-character-before-you-type-a-word-type books. I'm not saying such methods don't work—what do I know—or that successful writers don't write that way—they probably do. But for me, even considering adopting such a regimen deadens any urge I might have to hit the keyboard.

Marcia Golub's I'd Rather Be Writing, on the other hand, is the furthest thing from disheartening. The author offers practical advice about writing that the average mortal can imagine following—advice about note-taking and imposing deadlines on oneself and keeping numerous projects, in varying stages, going at once. The principal piece of advice one comes away from the book with, however, is a simple one: if you want to be a writer, you have to sit down every day—or as close to every day as you can—and write something for some length of time. This is not earth-shattering information, of course, and indeed none of what Golub has to say is particularly profound. Nor did it have to be said at such length. The book could probably have gotten the same information across in half the pages.

But that wouldn't have been as much fun. Golub's writing is pleasingly breezy and occasionally funny.

"I know there are marriages where husband and wife both work at home. I also know there are marriages where husbands push wives out of windows and wives sprinkle arsenic on their husbands' bowls of pasta. I'm not saying the two are related, but you have to wonder."

She lets her personality and her life circumstances spill onto the page. She writes about her own work habits, descriptions of which for some reason always fascinate me. Most importantly, Golub somehow manages to be inspirational. She makes you want to follow her advice, to sit down and write something, both because you really want to and because, as she might say, death is just around the corner. (Golub seems unusually aware of her own mortality.) Writers looking for a kick in the pants, as the kids say, may well find inspiration here.