The Kick-Ass Writer: 1001 Ways to Write Great Fiction, Get Published, and Earn Your Audience
- Author
- Chuck Wendig
- Year
- 2013
- Cluster
- dark & speculative
- Format
- book
Chuck Wendig built an audience at his blog terribleminds with profane, funny, high-velocity lists about the writing life; The Kick-Ass Writer (2013) is that voice between covers — 1001 numbered pieces of advice in 25-item bursts, covering everything from first sentences to query letters to the maintenance of the writer’s own head.
Judge the format honestly: 1001 of anything guarantees unevenness, and Wendig’s aphorisms range from genuinely sharp craft insight to motivational profanity that evaporates on contact. The book is also unapologetically loud — pull-quotes-and-espresso loud — and readers who want a developed argument will find 1001 fragments of one.
But the fragments have a cumulative effect no systematic book matches: momentum. This is craft advice as cornerman patter, and its real subject is the psychological grind — finishing, submitting, being rejected, starting again. When you know the technique and still aren’t producing pages, Wendig is the right tool. The blog remains free at terribleminds.com, and reading it first is a fair audition for the book.
You need a kick more than a curriculum, and you can take craft advice delivered as stand-up.
Aphorisms in lists make you want an argument instead — 1001 of them won't convert you.
On Writing — the same work ethic, indoor voice · Now Write! SFF & Horror — channel the energy into exercises