About the writing

I've just read the best book I've ever found on writing. It's called Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin. I've been enjoying her fiction over the past year or so, always wondering how I've never read these books before. What was a I reading as a kid? Mostly the same few books over and over, I think. I missed a lot of good stuff!
At any rate, this book is not about plot or character, which should really be self-explanatory one would think, but so many books go over and over this territory. As if someone was saying, "I would really like to be a writer. Of course I've never actually read a book..." Or worse they talk about how to get ideas. If you don't have 20+ story ideas in your head at any given moment, why would you want to be a writer? Then there are the people who want to give you an idea, you can write the book, and the two of you can split the profit 50/50. I wonder if sculptors get this, "I have a great idea for a statue. It's a man on a horse, holding up a sword. You sculpt it and we can split the profit." Or musicians, "I have a great idea for a song. It's about this guy who really likes this girl..."
At least in Ursula's book, she assumes you already have an idea, and you know the storytelling basics. Her book is all about the language and how to use it. She is also a poet, which I think really helps in this respect. I've always thought that James Joyce and William Faulkner's work was so evocative because they had both tried being poets first. I've only skimmed over the text, I haven't done any of the writing exercises yet. My writing time is pretty small since I need the house quiet and that never happens. Plus I've still got those three stories I'm working on. They line up like Darwin: one is just crawling, one is about halfway there, and one is still a bit hunched but almost upright.