Review: Process by Sarah Stodola

Published January 20th 2015
by Amazon Digital Services

Sarah Stodola has written an interesting book in Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors. This book is of interest to more than just those drawn to the writing life. People who are interested in how their favorite books might have been written will enjoy it as well. 

From the Introduction: "Process will also interest those who love literature with without wishing to create it themselves, in the same way that seeing the way a car motor works can be fascinating for mere drivers. One of the great surprises of writing this book was that looking under the hood did nothing to diminish the awe that my favorite books inspire in me. If anything, I grew more fascinated."

There are all kinds of writers included from plotters to pantsers and more. Each entry contains a brief biography of the writer. At the end of the biography, there is "A Day in the Writer's Life" describing briefly how a day might go as the author works. Sections are: Nine to Fivers, Productive Procrastinators, Autodidacts, Plotting Ahead, Winging It, The Author as Protagonist, Slow and Steady, The Social Butterfly and the Lone Wolf, and Two Takes on the Digital Age.

Authors included are: Franz Kafka, Toni Morrison, David Foster Wallace, Richard Price, Edith Wharton, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Salman Rushdie, Joan Didion, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Junot Diaz, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood, and Zadie Smith.

        

I gave this book 4 stars. I enjoyed reading about these authors. It made me hungry to learn more about other favorite authors. This book is well written. Occasionally the bio and the day in the life overlap  a little in content, but that's really not an issue. It just puts some of the information in another context. I would give this book as a gift both to future writers and to people I know enjoy reading the authors included or just plain  love literature.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. 

All quotes come from an unpublished ARC and are subject to change in the final copy.