A Review of “The Kick-Ass Writer”

Anyone who knows me at all knows of my love for the blog written by Chuck Wendig, Terrible Minds. He gives outstanding – though profane and sometimes (okay, often) vulgar – writing advice. I recommend that any writer who wants to improve step into the asbestos boots, slip on some high-stress sunglasses, and wade right in. You might get your tooties stepped on, but by George, you’ll learn something.

Chuck’s compiled a lot of his blog posts into books. I have them all in Kindle versions. His new one, however, “The Kick-Ass Writer: 1001 Ways to Write Great Fiction, Get Published, and Earn Your Audience,” I bought in paperback.  His other writing books were self-published; this one is published by Writer’s Digest Books. Result: the ebook version is closer in cost to the paperback version than I’d like. So I bought the paper version.

So what do I think about this book? Let me count all 1,001 ways I love it. Okay, no one has time for that.   I’ll just summarise, shall I?

I loved this book. Much of it I had read on the Terrible Minds blog. It’s still good to have all in one place. The book is divided into three parts: Fundamentals, Craft, Publishing and Earning Your Audience.

Fundamental topics include “25 Things I Want to Say to So-Called ‘Aspiring’ Writers,” “25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling,” "and “25 Ways to Defeat Writer’s Block.”

Topics in the Craft include: “25 Things You Should Know About Plot,” “25 Things You Should Know About Narrative Structure,” “25 Things You Should Know About Character.” This section is probably my favourite. It’s chockfull of brilliance. Brilliance.

Finally, topics in Publishing/Earn Your Audience: “25 Things You Should Know About Self-Publishing,” “25 Things You Should Know About Getting Published,” “25 Ways to Earn Your Audience.”

You can read this book cover-to-cover. You can read only the bits that you need to read as you need them. You can read them randomly. It doesn’t matter. I cannot recommend the book highly enough.

Your ass will be kicked. Kicked right into high gear.

This is the link to the paperback edition. It’s also available as an ebook.

The Kick-Ass Writer: 1001 Ways to Write Great Fiction, Get Published, and Earn Your Audience