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Inside
the Cover Book Reviews What it Feels Like Writers
are advised to ‘write about what you know,’ but eventually every writer will
need to research an experience beyond their own life. A male author shouldn’t
be excluded from writing a childbirth scene for his heroine and a law-abiding
thriller writer may need to know the reality of solitary confinement or how a
mob hitman wired a car to explode. Hence
this collection of first person essays should prove invaluable to writers
everywhere. It gathers tales from the ‘What it feels like’ feature of Esquire
magazine and other new sources. If you can read the entire book and not be
inspired to create a character based on these experiences, I will be
shocked. But not as shocked as the man who survived a lightning strike or the
child who lived after a bullet to the head. The
small size of this book, its quirky illustrations, and short chapters means that
this is one reference tome you can slip into your pocket, so the next time your
editor demands ‘more action’ you can throw your hapless character into one
of these situations and just write what happens next. You could even use the 60
stories as a series of writing prompts. Some tales are recounted by celebrities like Ranulph Fiennes, the explorer and father of Ralph Fiennes, who cut off his frostbitten fingers with a saw, or Buzz Aldrin, who describes how to walk on the moon. Others are anonymous, like the man who explains that 'at their best, orgies are like sex with a trained octopus.' Horror
writers will love the exorcism stories while crime writers might use the honest
facts provided by a former heroin addict. Any writer of drama or romance could
find inspiration in the well-written story of a 90-minute amnesia incident
following a snowboarding accident, and for tragedy, you will find the sadness in
the attempted suicide account to be more than enough. Curiosity
about walking a mile in another person’s shoes is one of the motivations for
writers and there are enough vicarious thrills here to keep you reading each
real life snippet despite the uneven quality of the writing itself. It’s hard
to know how accurate these accounts are unless you’re a daredevil writer, but
they have the ring of truth. If
any theme emerges from these disparate tales it is encapsulated by George
Sutton, a cattle rancher who was gored by a bull, required 480 stitches, and
still cattle ranches today, when he says, "You just can’t throw in the
towel." Now that’s a motto every writer could live by. Grace
Tierney (www.gracetierney.com) is a freelance writer who lives in Ireland and
enjoys reading anything from chick-lit to James Joyce. Her book reviews, short
stories, and non-fiction have been published internationally in print, online
media, and anthologies. She is a staff writer with Writer Online (http://www.writeronline.us) and Netsurfer Digest (http://www.netsurf.com). She is currently reading Problems
in Living by Melissa Brown Levine. |
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