Product Description

Snoopy sits atop his dog house, banging out stories on a manual typewriter. Usually they begin "It was a dark and stormy night..." Always they're rejected. In Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life - a wonderful gift for writers - a roundup of 30 famous writers and entertainers respond in short essays to their favorite Snoopy "at the typewriter" strip. Each essay focuses on how the strip presents an aspect of writing life - getting started, getting rejected, searching for new ideas, and more - everything that beginners and professional writers deal with on a daily basis. The essays are light and sometimes humorous, but all of them offer insight and inspiration for writers working at any level. The book presents a powerful lineup of contributors, including: Ray Bradbury; Julia Child; Sue Grafton; Elmore Leonard; And the Beagle himself! William F. Buckley, Jr.; Elizabeth George; Evan Hunter; Danielle Steel; Editors Barnaby Conrad and Monte Schulz (son of the late Charles Schulz) provide introductory chapters that address the writing life and how Snoopy's experience - his tenacity and resilience - can inspire us all.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #453904 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From Library Journal
Using the many Snoopy "at the typewriter" strips as jumping-off points, 30 famous writers as disparate as Ray Bradbury, Elmore Leonard, Budd Shulberg, Dominick Dunne, Danielle Steele, and Sue Grafton have written short pep talks, amusing anecdotes, or just useful advice to would-be writers based on their own experiences. Witty and charming, the essays offer much creative and practical wisdom. But the highlight of the book is the touching foreword by Charles Schulz's son, Monte, who offers some striking insights into his father's life, giving the reader a glimpse of the legendary cartoonist as a reader as well as a writer. Editor Conrad (The Complete Guide to Writing Fiction) also contributes an insightful introduction to this collection, which is an inspiring homage to Schulz that will appeal to all writers and aspiring writers as well as to fans of the late Peanuts creator. Highly recommended.
Herbert E. Shapiro, Empire State Coll., SUNY, Rochester
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Witty and charming...will appeal to all writers and aspiring writers as well as to fans of the late Peanuts creator. Highly recommended."

About the Author
Monte Schulz is the son of "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz. Bamaby Conrad is a writer of fiction and nonfiction.

Customer Reviews

It was a dark and stormy review...
"Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life" is a tribute to Charles Schulz, the late great creator of the Peanuts comic strip and its famous beagle-with-a-typewriter, Snoopy. The book is filled with various strips lampooning all sorts of aspects of writing, and tiny snippets of advice from famous authors.

The strips in this book are so funny that I had to share many of them with my husband as I read. Particularly all the ones that have within them some variation of the line: "It was a dark and stormy night." Snoopy seemed fixated on that idea, unable to get past it to anything more original than "it was a dark and stormy noon," or perhaps, "he was a dark and stormy knight."

And in between all of these stormy nights we get to see Snoopy's clashes with editors and publishers of all kinds: "Dear Contributor, We are returning your dumb story. Note that we have not included our return address. We have moved to a new office, and we don't want you to know where we are." Ouch! All writers can identify with some part of the poor beagle's struggles for fame, recognition, and a fifty thousand dollar check!

I was a bit surprised to find out just how short most of these little essays are--a few paragraphs, generally. On the other hand, it meant there was more room for comic strips, so how can I complain? This book isn't meant to be an exhaustive textbook or guide to the writing life. It's a joyful riff on the pain, excitement, and perspiration that is writing. You're bound to find something in here by a writer you love, and it's neat just to see what these preeminent folks have to say. Each essay is preceded by a related comic strip, and many of the essays address Snoopy or one of his friends directly, or mention poor Snoopy's latest plight--it's an endearing conceit. Each is then followed by several more strips just to keep us laughing.

This is a wonderful coffee table book. It's a great gift for your favorite struggling, would-be, or even successful writer. All of us can relate to Snoopy's trials and tribulations. All of us can enjoy seeing these brief words of wisdom from such accomplished authors. And all of us could use a good laugh at ourselves and the "hardships" we endure in the writing life!

Methinks I spotted a mistake
On page 153, in an effort to encourage writers who might be dismayed by rejection slips, Jack Canfield writes, "Margaret Mitchell's classic GONE WITH THE WIND was turned down by more than twenty five publishers." To my knowledge, this is completely untrue. The story I've heard (from more than one source) goes something like this: Margaret Mitchell wrote the book while recovering from a leg injury. She considered writing as simply a hobby, and she wasn't even thinking of publishing the book. She figured she was only writing it for her and her husband. But then one day a publisher came to Atlanta and some of Margaret's friends told him that she was working on a book. Margaret had once worked for a brief period on the local newspaper and she had some connections in the city. The publisher was eager to see the manuscript, but Margaret didn't have much confidence in it and she refused to show it to him. But he worked on her and finally wore her down. She showed up at the train station just before he was leaving with a pile of envelopes that contained different portions of the novel, all out of order. The book was hardly a rough draft at this stage, but the publisher liked what he read and he signed the book and Margaret went to work cleaning it up and polishing it into the book we know today. I've never heard anything about these other twenty five publishers. People should check their facts before they print things in a twenty dollar book.

For entertainment only - but what great fun!
Any writer looking for deep words from the large (and highly respected) group of writers featured in "Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life" will come away disappointed. But for those writers who are looking for a laugh and a breezy escape featuring personal writing tales from the likes of William F. Buckley, Ed McBain, Danielle Steel, Julia Child, Ray Bradbury and Elmore Leonard, this book fills the bill as well as anything out there.

A handsome book with a clean layout, quality semigloss stock, and a good binding, the showpieces are the delightful Charles Schultz "Peanuts" strips featuring Snoopy in his hopeless Writer persona. Each one is funnier than the next, and as brought together in one place provide an overview of Snoopy's writing strips that I have not found in any other collection. (The strips span the latter half of the comic's run as Snoopy's Writer didn't show up until the Seventies.)

Schultz skewers just about every genre of writing, nails the agonies and ecstasies of rejection and acceptance, and does more with "It was a dark and stormy night" than seems humanly possible. If you are a writer and can't laugh at Snoopy's pathetic talents, you need to get out of the profession! Nonwriters might find the author anecdotes just a distraction from the humor in the strips, but what a wonderful distraction.

So sure, it fails to be a writer's workshop, sacrificing technical knowhow for mirth, but still, how can you lose? I can think of far worse ways for a writer to spend a few hours than reading this little piece of escapism.

A three star book with a four star soul thanks to Schultz's keen eye and Snoopy's aplomb.