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I'd been saving this one for the right moment, and before I left to spend Thanksgiving at my mom's house, I decided now. Now was the moment. (I've seriously owned it in hardcover for about five years now.) I ended up loving it. Just the perfect book at the exact right time.

I've read other books about how to write--the craft of it, the habits, all that jazz--but none of them have gotten their point across quite like Uncle Stevie does here. On Writing is concise but effective. And it's really fun to read.

The book is split into several sections, the two most prominent being 1) A memoir of his life as it relates to stories and writing, and how the two are intertwined; and 2) The advice he wants to give to aspiring writers. There isn't much of the latter, in comparison to other writing books at least, but what is there is simple and practical. He tells it like it is, and he tells it from front to back. He sort of frames it as the answers to the questions that he wishes aspiring writers would ask him, not just the ones they ask him all the time.

Mostly what I loved about it was how personal his writing felt. I liked the parts where he talked about his life in writing as much as the parts about writing itself (particularly the bits where he talks about writing his books, where he thought of the stories, the struggles he had in writing them, how he overcame writer's block, etc.)

I think even non-writers would enjoy this book. Highly recommended.