Writing for love or money [antikvár]

FOREWORDis book is concerned with writing as a craft, but it is not a "how-to" book. It neither offers keys to the literary kingdom, nor professes special knowledge of short cuts for converting writing aptitude into publishing contracts. What it does do is to deal with writing as a profession or as a serious avocation, mostly by way of discussing the problems that face the writer.These problems are not theoretical. They are personal, in the most literal sense. Indeed, many of the chapters in this book are autobiographical, drawing upon the experiences of the authors in attempting to work out the special demands of their own fields of writing. For, whether you write for love or money, you early discover that there are as many divisions and subdivisions in writing as there are in science or in business. A writer may be a specialist on rare diseases for a medical journal or he may prepare college catalogues or he may be a novelist (even here, there is a wide range between the special skills demanded of a historical novelist and a science fiction writer). Of course, there is the tradition of the universalist in literature, from Aristotle to H. G. Wells, but that is another theme. In this book, at least, the attempt is made to discuss subjectively the problems and the opportunities that seem to be peculiar to some of the special fields of writing. The questions considered involve training, technique, relationships with publisher and public, etc. It is important to add that these questions are stated and explored rather than answered definitely, for the writer's problems begin anew with almost every new piece of work.v