“Buy now and be a better writer in only 7 days”

I haven’t been writing much on here lately as I have focused some greater time to several of my own short stories. Looking for inspiration and seeking different paths to take my writing I have looked into several different styles.

I am coming to the end of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Hell’s Angels”. Good novel written with the feeling of one long news paper article that explains a great deal of what the day to day lives were like of the Angels in the 60’s. The facts are continuously explained from three sides; the Angels, the police and the general public. Hunter hung around the rogue biker group and learned a great deal of their actions, why and who they were and the publics’ misconceptions of the group.

So I started thinking of authors that I had been interested in reading when I had completed school. I have decided to order a few pieces from Poe, Hemingway, other classics and Chuck Palahniuk-someone completely different form the previous two.

Chuck Palahniuk is the genius behind the cult classic, and one of my personal favorites, “Fight Club”. He has an intriguing style of writing that utilizes several styles at the same time i.e. descriptive, explanatory and so on. He was considered merely a shock writer and was said to be merely doing this to get attention. Of course this wasn’t really his first and only intention. He is a shock writer only in the sense that he writes and creates pieces that reflect his life, personality and fiction.

A second book of Palahniuk’s, Choke, was also made into a movie and will be released August 1st, 08. I would prefer to read the book before it is released and will be ordering it along with Invisible Monsters and Survivor. Survivor was slated to be a movie released in late 2001 or early 2002. The reason it was not is that plot of the novel is based on a man that hijacks a plane with the intentions of crashing it in Australia. Not really a film that America would have been rushing out to see in the post 9/11 world.

Finally I read a short story of his online entitled, Guts. I was going to put the link as it is a window into his humour and intriguing -some might say demented- personality. But the fact that my stomach actually turned a couple times during my first reading of it, I decided against posting the link.

If you are interested in reading it -kind of like a car crash don’t want to look but can not turn a way- then it is merely a google search away. But this is a STRONG WARNING, I am warning you do not blame me if you do not like it or feel ill from reading it, this isn’t a passage from your classic best selling novel. I do not warn to often as I feel things need to be experienced in life but in this case I am saving my own ass -you will think that is funny in a gross way if you read it.

Plus if you do decide to read Guts, do not base your impression of Chuck solely from this piece. It is merely one of many and is why he was considered merely a shock writer. I just found the style and comedy at the beginning to be rather well done. I would be much happier if you were to read his other books first.

What I will put is his website, http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/. It has all the regular stuff you would think of i.e. bio, interviews, book info, but what I find really interesting are his short essay’s and tips and information on how to be a better writer.

Most authors would write a book on these instructions call it “How to be a better writer in 12 easy steps”. Slap a sticker on it stating “What a deal, all this information for just $29.95.” It would then be shipped to every Strabucks injected Chapter’s where it would be placed between “Writing for Dummies” and “How to Be a better Person”. The author would hope that Oprah would bless it with her personal seal of approval after completing and interview on her show. They would finally sit at home waiting for the cheques to roll in.

Chuck on the other hand is offering these tips, writing workshops and forums for free. Guess that’s why he writes as he lives; a dedicated minimalist.