Review of a few Books on Writing

A brief review of a few books on writing. They symbol ** means I highly recommend having on the home bookshelf.

** 1.) ON BECOMING A NOVELIST -- JOHN GARDNER
Terrific book and one I'm partial too since first reading it back in the 80's. Talks about faith and keeping at it. It's a good motivational book. There is also a great chapter on the authoratitive voice that discusses Melville with wonderful clarity.


2.) THE ART OF FICTION -- JOHN GARDNER
If you liked the shorter one then you might continue with this. Gardner is a Modernist novelist par excellence and he discusses much of what makes up the novel as he understood it. He discusses plot in terms of the usual Fichtean progression, and makes a case for the sound and rhythm of the language. You may find it a bit pedantic for your tastes but Gardner was a great writer who influenced many.

** 3.) THE SOUND ON THE PAGE -- BEN YAGODA
Yagoda is a journalist so he approaches writing from that perspective. Still the emphasis is upon discovering and cultivating a distinct authoritative voice. Yes it's just that important. Now that Modernism is officially over, we realize we can once more talk about style in art. Yagoda says, "That the how is more important and revealing than the what goes without saying..." You may disagree at first but let him explain, which he does so by quoting Flaubert, "From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things...." A definite keeper.

** 4.) MASTER CLASS IN FICTION WRITING -- ADAM SEXTON
Sexton uses many examples from master writings of the past to illustrate points on story structure, characterization, plot, point of view and style/voice. He makes the case the best writing is descriptive writing. This is like a book of artistic styles and processes and its an area not covered by many other writing books.

** 5.) WRITING FICTION -- GOTHAM WRITER'S WORKSHOP
A general, all purpose book covering characters, dialogue, point of view, voice, setting, pacing. Much to learn here, and it's written in a down-to-earth manner that keeps you interested. Examples from great writers illustrate each topic, which is always nice to have.

** 6.) SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS -- RENNI BROWNE AND DAVE KING
Any book that helps writers gain another degree of objectivity in regard to their own works deserves a place on my shelf. As Hemingway said, "All first drafts are shit." It's true. Writing is revision. And more revision. And more revision. We must be clear as to our habits and faults in terms of point of view, dialogue, proportion -- yes they are all in this book. It's short and sweet.

7.) SCENE & STRUCTURE -- JACK M. BICKHAM
This author has published more than 80 novels in his lifetime blah blah blah. It's not quantity but quality. There are a number of books in this series and while they're interesting because they dig into the topic, they're not necessities. I view them much as I do chess books on specific openings. At a certain point you want to learn more about the specific line so you head to a book on it.

8.) ON WRITING -- STEPHEN KING
This is a good book, believe it or not. Half is biography (which is easy to skip) but the rest concerns the craft of constructing a piece of writing. After reading this I said to myself, "hey this king guy actually might be able to put out a decent novel!" Well we've yet to see it (although Hearts in Atlantis had its sparkling moments.) No need to own this one but it is a must read.


9.) FROM WHERE YOU DREAM -- ROBERT OLEN BUTLER
The book is basically transcriptions of a series of lectures in which the author beats us over the head with one idea: Make it concrete and super-descriptive. There are some anecdotes in the back where Mr. Pulitzer Prize Winner flings his sage wisdom onto the loose thinking/writing minds of students -- basically he tells them how to do it, but the how is his way. It got tedious. Still, parts are good to read.

10.) THE ART AND CRAFT OF NOVEL WRITING -- OAKLEY HALL
The fact this is a writer's digest book is a tip off. Lots of practical advice but how much do you dare trust it. Take it for what it is. The nice part is there are lots of quotes by writers.

11.) THE FAITH OF A WRITER -- JOYCE CAROL OATES
In her own I'm so full of myself style Oates attempts to tell us about writing - the problem is she's a mediocre writer so how much can we trust. The book needed a good editor and it repeats in places. Yet for all my complaints, it's worth reading.

12.) WRITING WITHOUT TEACHERS -- PETER ELBOW
When I saw this was the book used for a creative writing class at Harvard, and then that it was published in the 1970's I had to find it. The main premise is do lots and lots of free-writing before even thinking of putting the work into any sort of final form. It's all stuff we know, tap into the subconscious, let the mind freely wander -- and I admit it's easier for some than for others to do this. It's one approach and one that often provides some terrific material. But once you know the technique you don't really require the book. His own writing and personal freewriting examples are tough to slog through.

13.) LAWRENCE BLOCK ON WRITING -- LAWRENCE BLOCK
He's a genre writer and much of what he offers is just outdated or inappropriate for constructing a novel that aspires to be more than formulaic. Skip it.

14.) WORD PAINTING -- A GUIDE TO WRITING MORE DESCRIPTIVELY -- REBECCA MCCLANAHAN
Weak, unconsidered, cliche ridden, mundane, obvious, repetitive. How are those for descriptors? She repeats the most obvious and then repeats and repeats. Some facts are just plain wrong. It's one long writer's magazine article saying, "Use the word carmine rather than red." Yawn. Don't just skip but burn. Terrible terrible book.

15.) WRITING DOWN THE BONES -- NATALIE GOLDBERG
Jsut when you thought it couldn't get any worse. This and her other books are horrific.
This is a book less about writing and more about the author's anecdotes. She rambles on about various subjects, evading the point, missing the point, contradicting herself, offering little of substance. Her writing is just plain bad. One sentence reads, "So much depends on it because poems are small moments of enlightenment -- at that moment the wheelbarrow just as it was woke Williams up and was everything." Barely sensible and tougher to read. At another point her sentence construction causes a desk to dance with a bride's mother. There is so little practical advice in this book beyond simplistic third-grader help as to render the book nearly useless. Lastly she seems to think great writing is not important. Better, she says, that one write lots and lots and lots -- she fills a spiral notebook each month. So what. It's quantity not quality for her and this book is proof that good writing is important, a lesson she has yet to learn. Useless, terrible, poorly written book. I wouldn't line a cat box with this one for fear of hurting the cat.

READING THIS SUNDAY

I'll be reading at Word on the Street this coming Sunday at 2:00 pm.

Word on the street is a large-scale celebratin of literacy and the printed word and everyone's invited to come have fun.

Please check out the link to Word on the Street and come say hello.

What I can't tell you.

I've been reading a good deal over the past month and a newish book you might want to read is ManBug by George Ilsley. It's certainly a shake-up of normal literature but really worth the few bux. (He's the author of Random Acts of Hatred, 2004). Here is a link you can check out.

Unfortunately I can' t tell you most of what I've read recently. I'd like to, I want to, but I don't dare.

Ah, you ask why. I'll tell you. These are books by Canadian writers. They are writers who I believe are giving Canadian writing a nasty, foul name.

I'm complaining about two issues. The first is the number of errors that fill their pages: capitalization problems, misspellings, inconsistencies. Examples, in the book I just threw down in disgust last night after reaching the last page, and one I might add by a major Canadian author, I found often in paragraphs nearly next to each other Volkswagen beetle and Beetle, tee shirt and tee-shirt, dia de las muertas (which should be dia de los muertos), Led Zepellin instead of the correct Led Zeppelin. We wish to trust our writers, and we know there are such things as a dictionary and the internet. So just how can so many errors get through? Where is the editor and proofreader? My suspicion is that bigger publishing houses have fired them all, or they are so afraid of the more major author's ego that they don't dare touch anything.

My second beef is the lack of quality in the writing. We're talking hideous, horrifyingly bad writing here, with dependant clauses all over the place, with sentences ending with the same adverb over and over, with three or four sentences that should be combined, or even those repeating the same material two paragraphs later. I cannot help but consider this highly suspect, and my guess is the authors neither cared nor revised nor reread. And I would guess that IF they asked readers to lookk their work over, the readers were afraid to comment. Hey I know we all make mistakes, that's one of the beauties of the novel, it's big, dangerous, tottering on the edge of blowing apart. But to be able to easily critique the book in terms of a 101 writing class -- well I just don't see the excuse. There should be no excuse. Art is not about tossing slop onto a page or a canvas and saying it's done. It's about revising and crafting and making it clear.

And so I won't tell you what I've been reading, only because these books are written by Canadian authors (some I might add have been sponsored by Canada Council and have received rave reviews by the Toronto Globe -- which I'm beginning to suspect is paid off by publishing houses because any reviewer that read these books would have to be blind not to see such problems.) So call me chicken. Call me unwilling to piss off members of the writing community here. No, I won't do it publically. Come to my class and I'll gladly tell you.