I began to collect books on writing. This may seem be an oxymoron, read a book to learn how to write a book, but it does work. I now have in my ever growing library a few books that cover the subject. Among my favorites, and would suggest reading are, Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones”, Heather Sellers, “Practice of Creative Writing”, Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, and Ned Stuckey-French-French’s “Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft”, William Zinsser, “On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, and Stephen King’s, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” I have read these books and the advice within their pages are sound and helpful.
Out of all of the book on writing in my collection my favorite is a four book box set titled, “Creative Writing Course: Famous Writers School”. The books in the set are simply titled, “Creative Writing Course 1, 2, 3, 4. These “text” books are from a correspondence course for writers during the 1960s and 1970s. At the time nearly every Newspaper and magazine had ads for the course, you would cut out the ad and send for, or “apply”, for the free aptitude test. According to the ad a prestigious list of writers which included, Paul Engle (long-time director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop), Rod Serling (of Twilight Zone fame), mystery writer Mignon Eberhart, Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Catton, and romance author Faith Baldwin. Day-to-day operations were managed by Gordon Carroll (Reader’s Digest editor) and John Lawrence (former president of William Morrow publishers) were to read and grade students work. It all came to a head when Jessica Mitford investigated and exposed the 48 million dollar scam. Because of the scandal Mitford’s article created The Famous Writers School filed for bankruptcy in 1972.
I bought the set of “Famous Writers School” books at a Goodwill for $1.50. I love the background story behind the books. The books themselves do give good advice for aspiring writers and mine have sections that had been underlined by someone, perhaps a “Famous Writers School” student. I wonder how they felt when the school was found to be a scam, I wonder if that same student is now a published author, or were their dreams ripped away by the scam.
For a more complete story about Jessica Mitford’s investigation check out https://davidgaughran.com/2014/12/16/how-jessica-mitford-exposed-a-48m-scam-from-americas-literary-establishment/
A Collection of Twisted Things 