Several Short Sentences About Writing

By: Verlyn Klinkenborg

Narrated by: Verlyn Klinkenborg

Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

Most of what you think you know about writing is useless. It's the harmful debris of your education - a mixture of half-truths, myths, and false assumptions that prevents you from writing well. Drawing on years of experience as a writer and teacher of writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg offers an approach to writing that will change the way you work and think. There is no gospel, no orthodoxy, no dogma in this book. What you'll find here isn't the way to write. Instead, you'll find a way to clear your mind of illusions about writing and discover how you write.

Several Short Sentences About Writing is a book of first steps and experiments. They will revolutionize the way you think and perceive, and they will change forever the sense of your own authority as a writer. This is a book full of learning, but it's also a book full of unlearning - a way to recover the vivid, rhythmic, poetic sense of language you once possessed.

An indispensable and unique book that will give you a clear understanding of how to think about what you do when you write and how to improve the quality of your writing.

©2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Highly recommended.

Great book and narrator. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning how to write concisely.

A great listen!

This book was worth the listen. Great voice. Great message. I learned so much! I will say some of the exercises would be easier with the physical book. I will look at getting a copy.

Unlearn What You Have Learned (About Sentences)

This is essentially an entire English class in the form of a book, specifically focused on word choice and sentence structure, and pushing against all the lessons we were all taught in school. That may be good or bad, depending on what you’re looking for.

Slow

Author made his point well. It’ll take me a few listens to get it. It may take a few more listens and a lot of writing.
I wonder if he could’ve read the book slower.
Maybe he could add some longer pauses.

Go ahead. Download it.

A few things hit home. Like trusting your readers and not dumbing things down for them. Breaking out of the templates you were handed in school. And at the end, he actually goes through a bunch of sentences and explains what's wrong with them in layman terms. Hardly anyone does this in 'How to Write' books, though it seems requisite.

The only thing I really disagree with is the turning over of sentences in your head until you get them perfect before writing them down. He gives his reasons. I just disagree. The hardest thing about writing is just... writing. So throwing up on the paper is fine as long as you get it down. I would rather have a so-so short story completed that I never have time to revise to perfection, than nothing but the first two perfect paragraphs of said story. I rant.

Overall, would recommend as there are plenty of ideas to pick and choose from.

One long tangent thought

The author has some good ideas, but failed to distill those ideas and present them in a comprehensive form. This book is a collection tangential ramblings. The book has potential to be good, but requires a significant rewrite.
The performance is monotone and uninspired. The performance would have been better suited for a book on hypnosis.

Witty and intelligent

I pick up this book because of the in tweaking title. I listen to it when I was going to bed the first night and it kept me awake because I didn’t wanna go to bed at all after having a listen to the first half an hour. It is a very good book. I think it’s truly amazing and how the narrative can be so powerful for a topic that people may overlook that’s not so important. The narrative is also very very clear.

Good time learning sentence structure

This is a pretty good read. The guy‘s voice was a little monotone and didn’t have the tone that would have made this more exciting but listening to him was great. He knows what he’s talking about and he provided many examples to show you that there are specific ways to write in specific ways not to write. So if you have a moment, enjoy this audio book.

A new way to think about writing

This audio book will give you a new way to look at your writing. Revision is writing. Writing is revision.

The examples at the end will help you to understand how to look at your sentences, pick apart the parts of speech, and realize the power of each word.

Top takeaways:
Use powerful verbs.
Revise as you write.
Unlearn most formal training.
Relearn to write as if the reader is reading between the lines.

Wonderfully poetic Manual for anyone who would try to write.

If all books of instruction were written as beautifully as this one, more of us would love to learn!

There are so many great lessons here for novice and veteran writers who either forgot or never learned the basic skills of putting pen to paper. Chapter Three alone is worth the price of admission and the Final Chapter is a terrific Final Exam full of examples of how to improve any sentence.

Buy this book before writing your next Great American Novel or a Thank You Note to your Aunt Clara. Four Stars ****