"My advice to young writers is to stop reading like readers and start reading like writers.� Reread stories, books, and passages from books that work for you.� Dissect the prose.� Write it out yourself longhand.� Get inside the mind of the writer.� Figure out why it works.� Then go forth and do the same." (p. 225, In Fact: the Best of Creative Non-Fiction,�Mark Bowden, "Finders Keepers: The Story of Joey Coyle")
This advice reminds me of Tobais Woolf in "Old School" typing out passages by his favorite writers.... of course, in that case, his identification with the stories he was copying went a bit too far.... but, it is still an intriguing technique.
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