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michael herr dispatches epub books







































Did you ever wonder what Michael Herr would say should he be granted a personal blog post? Well, here's your chance to find out. This is an excerpt from his new e-book with the same name. How Michael Herr Would Dispatch E-Books By M.Herr If I were writing an e-book about how to write, my advice would be only slightly different from my advice on how to write novels: don't give yourself too many rules and resist the temptation of imagining that your book will be judged by some kind of formula; instead, think of it as a conversation — your book and its readers — and avoid any attempt at "the one true way" at all costs. It's better to be heartfelt and mistaken than flip and right. This is a long sentence and you will have to read it twice: don't just think of your sentence as a book; think of your book as a sentence. But if all I'd written was this, I'd consider the project half-finished. So here's what else I'd like to say: 1. Don't worry about revising. That's what rewrites are for. Rewrites are very hard work, and there's no reason why you have to spend so much time doing them. If you go the whole way from the first draft to a hacked-up edition, I'd say, why bother at all? In fact, it's good practice not to revise at all. 2. Don't worry about being "right." To write fiction is extremely difficult, and if the result is going to be good that should be proof enough that you deserve credit for your accomplishment — it doesn't need a scorecard showing how many people agreed with you. To be wrong in your novel is to be you, and it's not even your fault. So when you get to the end of your third act and it doesn't seem to hang together, just roll with it. And if you're writing nonfiction, well, enough said. If facts don't fit your theory, I suggest you paraphrase Montaigne: "If facts don't fit my opinions, then so much the worse for facts." 3. Don't worry about what will happen when "it" hits the fan after publication. The world will go on turning without giving a damn about your book unless it's extremely bad or extremely good. The true test of your accomplishment will be the fact that you sat down and wrote it. And if you've written something really good, there's no way for people to convince you that they liked it. 4. Don't spend any time second-guessing yourself at all, unless your first thought was "I can't do this." If you're thinking this at the beginning of your first book, then everything will probably be all right; but if it's your fifth book, then I'm pretty sure that if you just kept going, sooner or later things would have worked out. eccc085e13

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