Bill Peschel: Willa Cather’s Words to Live By

What is this?
It's Bill Peschel's professional and personal home on the web. Welcome. Poke around in the drawers and cupboards. There's a lot of interesting stuff here.
What's the Reader's Almanac?
It's my 2008-2009 nonfiction book project. A year's worth of entertaining and thought-provoking stories and anecdotes about writers and their books, tied to the day they occurred. Published regularly. Here's a list of the essays published so far.
Why is it on the web?
I don't have an agent or a contract, so this is my way of building an audience, and seeing if there's any interest in the book. The daily deadlines don't hurt, either.
Are you going to write anything else here?
Sure. The occasional book review, a collection of links to neat articles and websites, and my opinions. You know, the usual stuff you find on the web.

Recent Reader's Almanac Posts

Saturday Literature Links
Thoreau makes an ash of himself (1844)
Dickens leaves the United States, gratefully (1842)
Uprisings and Downfalls: Troy, Sherlock Holmes, the Irish Rebellion and Brendan Behan
A Merry Shakespeare (1597)
Petrarch: Just one look (1327)
Writers at Play: Brendan Behan and Jackie Gleason
Writers at Rest: Henry James

The Unscratchables. Cornelius Kane.

Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days. Al Columbia.
Mostly Harmless. Douglas Adams.
Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop. Lee Goldberg.

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February 26, 2007

Willa Cather’s Words to Live By

My advice to the would-be writer is that he start slowly, writing short un-demanding things, things such as telegrams, flip-books, crank letters, signature scarves, spot quizzes, capsule summaries, fortune cookies and errata. Then, when he feels he's ready, move up to the more challenging items such as mandates, objective correlatives, passion plays, pointless diatribes, minor classics, manifestos, mezzotints, oxymora, exposes, broadsides and papal bulls.

"And above all, never forget that the pen is mightier than the plowshare. By this I mean that writing, all in all, is a hell of a lot more fun than farming. For one thing, writers seldom, if ever, have to get up at five o'clock in the morning and shovel manure. As far as I'm concerned, that gives them the edge right there." — Willa Cather's (fake) advice on writing, by Michael O'Donoghue

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