Nikki Loftin

Archive for April 15th, 2010

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

I should probably be wary of taking song lyrics as blog posts — someone might think I had a delusion that this blog were fabulous like Betsy Lerner’s — but what the heck. I wanted to talk about writing books today anyway. Not the act of writing books, no. I mean books about writing, written for writers. (Procrastinating writers like me, who spend long hours poring over them instead of finishing manuscripts. Oops.)

I recommended Betsy’s The Forest for the Trees a few months back — an excellent book which I have since loaned out and, therefore, will never see again. (Which one of you Writer Friends has it? I can’t even remember. Ah, well. Que sera. It’s the Circle of (book) Life, or some such.) For my birthday this week, I received a copy of Jane Yolen‘s (on whom I have a humongous writer-crush) writing book called Take Joy: A Writer’s Guide to Loving the Craft.

I’m not even halfway through this book, but I can already tell you — I will NOT loan this one out to anyone. I’m going to need this one again and again. So hie thee to a bookstore and get your own darn copy. Why should you spend your money on this little, watermelon-colored book? She doesn’t say anything in it you can’t pick up from other books, from the Internet, or from your writing buddies over a few glasses of wine. There’s not that much new in what she says. But, oh, Writer Friends. HOW she says it.

Sigh.

So, in honor of Jane Yolen, tomorrow is a designated BIC day – Butt In Chair. I’m turning off the phone, leaving the dishes in the sink, avoiding the Internet like the plague, and writing. Nothing else.

Writing all day long.

Now THAT’S taking joy, if you ask me.