Tag Archives: Becoming a Writer Reread

This is the sixth in my reread series of Dorothea Brande’s Becoming A Writer – seminal 1934 book that helped for the bedrock of a lot of modern writing advice.

You can find the first post here. Continue reading

This is the fifth in my reread series of Dorothea Brande’s Becoming A Writer – seminal 1934 book that helped for the bedrock of a lot of modern writing advice.

You can find the first post here.

Today we are looking at Chapter 5: Harnessing the Unconscious. Continue reading

This is the fourth instalment in my reread of Dorothea Brande’s remarkable 1934 book, Becoming a Writer. You can find part one here. In part one Dorothea Brande described the four key difficulties that prevent a person from writing. In the second chapter, she takes a closer look at what functional, professional writers are (generally speaking) like as a group. In part three, Dorothea takes a closer look at the advantages of splitting yourself into two people in your writing life. Continue reading

BECOMING A WRITER

Dorothea Brande

This is the third instalment in my reread of Dorothea Brande’s remarkable 1934 book, Becoming a Writer. You can find part one here. In part one Dorothea Brande described the four key difficulties that prevent a person from writing. In the second chapter, she takes a closer look at what functional, professional writers are (generally speaking) like as a group. In part three, Dorothea takes a closer look at the advantages of splitting yourself into two people in your writing life. Continue reading

BECOMING A WRITER

Dorothea Brande

I first read Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer after looking through a set of short writing advice pieces and noticing that at least three well-known authors advised it was essential reading, while no other book even got a mention. I remember one of those authors was Susanna Clarke, though I do not recall the other writer names. It doesn’t matter a great deal who they were – what matters is that they were right. I read Becoming a Writer and I felt immediately as if I were reading about all the secrets of writing that somehow I’d never noticed or heard mentioned. I’ve been intending to reread it for a couple years and this is as good a time as any. Continue reading

BECOMING A WRITER

Dorothea Brande (1934) ISBN 978-0-87477-164-0

Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer is one of the earliest and one of the best books published on how to approach life as a writer. It is not so much a book on style or craft or writerly technique, but rather a book about finding your way around the problems of writing as a lifestyle. It is one of the few books that is regularly cited by published writers as something that all aspiring writers should go read.

In weekly instalments we will be rereading Becoming a Writer and summarising and discussing one chapter at a time. The first instalment will be along later this week in which we will reread In Introduction and Chapter One: The Four Difficulties.