A Book that I never thought I'd read.
I recently read Pat Conroy's My Reading Life. Pat gave great credit to his mother who constantly put good reading material before him and encouraged him to read, read, read. Even though she had little education, she further inspired him by educating herself in literature. Gone With The Wind was high on her list of good reading.
I received a first edition of this classic as a gift over a year ago (Thanks Terry). It has sat in my bookcase gathering dust. I just couldn't get up the courage to tackle this eleven hundred page monster, but Pat inspired me.
What a mistake to delay this reading.. Margaret Mitchell broke all of these so-called rules that we aspiring writers are given. She used adverbs and exclamation marks, changed points-of-view within scenes, wrote chapters that didn't really push the plot forward, etc., but she painted a beautiful picturre which is what writing is truly about. In the last one hundred or so pages she captured the passion and emotions of Scarlett and Rhett without the lurid sex.
I'm not into romance lit, and perhaps there are better writers, but in my opinion Gone With The Wind is a must read
for today's romance writers.
Joe Petree
I recently read Pat Conroy's My Reading Life. Pat gave great credit to his mother who constantly put good reading material before him and encouraged him to read, read, read. Even though she had little education, she further inspired him by educating herself in literature. Gone With The Wind was high on her list of good reading.
I received a first edition of this classic as a gift over a year ago (Thanks Terry). It has sat in my bookcase gathering dust. I just couldn't get up the courage to tackle this eleven hundred page monster, but Pat inspired me.
What a mistake to delay this reading.. Margaret Mitchell broke all of these so-called rules that we aspiring writers are given. She used adverbs and exclamation marks, changed points-of-view within scenes, wrote chapters that didn't really push the plot forward, etc., but she painted a beautiful picturre which is what writing is truly about. In the last one hundred or so pages she captured the passion and emotions of Scarlett and Rhett without the lurid sex.
I'm not into romance lit, and perhaps there are better writers, but in my opinion Gone With The Wind is a must read
for today's romance writers.
Joe Petree
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