You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing

Part of my purchases for Scalzi's Planned Parenthood drive in the wake of the Susan G. Komen scandal. I really hate books that are just a collection of blog entries. Why don't I just read it for free on the blog? All the archives are up there.

Nonetheless, this book is good for people wanting to make a career of writing. This book will not help you write better. This isn't like Stephen King's "On Writing" or "Bird by Bird" or any of those. You learn about writing for a living, whether that's novels, ad copy, corporate material, or anything else freelancey, and what you need to do to make that possible. I think it will help you learn, in terms of principles of writing for money, not where to go to get jobs.

I was taken in by the clever title, but be warned: this book is about the COMMERCIAL writing business. While what he says is mostly valid, the author approaches writing as an industry. I'm too old/lazy to approach writing that way. Question: "Is there anything you wouldn't write for money?" His answer: he wouldn't write marketing material for a project he found objectionable. My answer: I wouldn't write marketing material (unless it had to do with my own writing).

First, this is essentially a collection of blog posts. That's not necessarily bad, but in this case it results in a lot of redundancy, which is why the book feels like a collection of blog posts.

Second, John Scalzi has a healthy ego. A very healthy ego. While he cops to it in the book, it doesn't stop him from repeatedly assuring the reader he makes a lot of money as a writer. Scads of it. (See "redundancy" above).

The real value of the "how to make a living as a professional writer" book lies in this: Even if you're a budding novelist, write anything anyone will pay you to write, and you'll do OK.

There. Sound advice.

I'd suggest the interesting reading doesn't really appear until the last dozen or so essays, where Scalzi talks about show more publishing and related issues. Ego recedes and the information flows, and life is good.

The least interesting bits include much of the first half and the stretches where he gets a little catty with other writers, and I had to wonder why the latter were even included.

At one point, Scalzi tells unpublished writers they essentially have no right to talk about the publishing world. Later -- despite having never written a screenplay -- he delves into the screenwriting world, and I could only smile.

This book isn't a terrible introduction to world of the professional writer, but it is repetitive and doesn't fulfill the promise of the cover copy, I've made my living as a writer for more than 25 years so I'm not the target audience, but I still I can't recommend it.

It reads like a bunch of not wildly informative blog posts cobbled together, and while I understand the writer's impulse, I think it should have been transformed from blog book to writer's book -- at least if it was going to live up to the jacket copy. show less

You're Not Fooling Anyone assembles various writing-related posts from Scalzi's blog, Whatever. His entries mostly relate his experiences in the publishing industry and present advice based on same. Scalzi doesn't much go for inspiring young artists with the idea of art for art's sake. Rather being of a more practical nature, he presents information about practical aspects of writing, namely money and how he's managed to survive as a working writer. He also writes about writers behaving badly and presents some science fiction related information (because that's the kind of fiction he writes).

As someone who had been making his living as a freelance writer for many years, Scalzi's advice and commentary is well placed, though even he show more admits that "your millage may vary." Not all the advice in this book will work for you. Scalzi doesn't expect it to; it just happened to work for him, so he expects someone else out there might also find it useful.

I don't know that I took any new information away from this book, as I've been reading about writing, working on writing, and submitting my writing for a while now. Though for those still just exploring the borders of publishing land, I'm sure there's plenty to learn.

If nothing else, Scalzi's is a great writer and his dry, sarcastic sense of humor is quite entertaining. show less

A very funny collection of essays. Two caveats: (1) If you're a regular reader of Scalzi's blog, there's not much new in this book. (2) The book was unexpectedly badly copyedited in a few places. Otherwise, a worthwhile read.

This is a book on writing - mostly the business of writing, as opposed to the act or art of writing (though there's some of that, too). Actually, a lot of the business aspects and ideas aren't field-specific. Some of them are, but there are also lots of good general home-business, self-employed kinds of advice. Also, it's just plain good, entertaining reading.

Got this in its first edition, as Subterranean Press is one of my favorite quality publishers and Scalzi's blog had drawn me in as a reader months before. Well worth the read, both for fledgling writers to get some advice and for others just for a good read.