A review by andrewspink
Het geheim van de schrijver by Renate Dorrestein

5.0

According to the author, there are almost a million Dutch people who would like to write a book. In this book she explains her craft to them. It is fully of witty quotes and amusing anecdotes, has a clear structure and comes across as really practical. I have spent a lot of my working life writing non-fiction; first scientific papers, then software manuals and these days grant applications. I enjoy the process of writing, and so also enjoyed reading how she explains the process necessary to write a good fiction book. I suppose in my more fanciful moments, I could imagine myself working as a fiction writer, but this book made it very clear what hard work that is, with all the rewriting, editing, correcting, rewriting and discarding. Not for the faint hearted.