[touisteur]

One book that (unexpectedly) gave me good tips on 'how to write' was Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. At some point the main character, who's a teacher in rhetoric, finds out that no one of his students know how to write. They all learned through analysis how great author have written this or that way, but they don't know where to start. They don't know the great authors probably didn't consciously decide to say 'here I'll put a metaphor, now a simile, and here you go, ellipsis'... They probably started with something simple, badly expressed, and refined, polished, restarted, embellished, simplified... The bigger hurdle of his students seems to be 'the first draft', the initial idea, the first words. Not even a 'blank page' problem. He gives them exercises in pure description, simpler and simpler and most of his students can't even start the first words. The funny 'solution' is just to start and write... Something... (and I'm not doing the book justice here sorry... I really like it, not as a philosophy reference (I've read many negative critics on this), but how it mixes the pain of being a father or a kid, the pain of mental illness, the pain of feeling cleverer than your peers, and the pain of being a teacher, a writer and a friend. All wrapped in a beautiful and sad storyline, lots of beautiful American scenery, and some advice on motorcycle maintenance...).