Scan barcode
sarlope12's review against another edition
3.0
I had to read this book for a class, and honestly it wasn’t terrible. I thought it was interesting to get a writers perspective on the whole writing process. Clearly Tom is in love with Frank which great. Wonderful. I won’t read this again.
drabname's review against another edition
4.0
The first part of this book is incredible, the second half drags
djrmelvin's review against another edition
4.0
This a memoir about that awful, wonderful, scary, magical journey that every author wants to take, the one that puts them in a place that when someone says "What do you do?" they can answer, "I'm a writer" without any fear of a followup question. Tom Grimes put in the hours, he did the revisions, he wrote and wrote and wrote. But still, it was a combination of good timing and talent that got him published. That's not great to hear if you're trying to make it as a published author, but at least Grimes is honest. Frank Conroy liked Grimes' work and was in a position to make things happen for him. Grimes never asks himself the question, "What if Frank had never saw my application?", something that could have happened very easily given the process to get into the Iowa Writer's Workshop. This is not a story about failure, so why look at what might have been? It's the story of more than getting by with a little help from a friend, it's about about one friend helping anouther's dreams come true.
sarahjsnider's review against another edition
4.0
This wasn't intended as a writing book, but I feel like I learned a lot about writing from it. Tom Grimes is excellent at writing descriptive prose without being overly self-conscious. His struggles (and Conroy's) to get his novels published and distributed were fascinating and probably disheartening for anyone who aspires to write literary fiction.
More...