Ernest Hemingway on Writing, A Review

Well, dear reader, it's that time of the week again: Craft Book Review Time, of course.  This week I've got a special treat for you, but how about I let Woody Allen introduce him:

All right, now we're ready to talk about one of the most lauded American Writers of the 20th Century: Ernest Hemingway.  Editor Larry W. Phillips notes in his preface that Hemingway thought it bad luck to discuss his process, but by the end of his career, Hemingway had done an awful lot of just that.  Across the decades of Hemingway's career, Phillips has distilled these wonderful quotes and snippets from Hemingway's letters, interviews, books, and short stories which illuminates the enigmatic and boisterous writer's style.

Of these findings, besides the wealth of useful information and lovely encouragement (honestly, who of us isn't at least a bit pleased and encouraged to discover that literary geniuses struggled to meet word counts?), my favorite tidbits are Hemingway's letters to "Scott" Fitzgerald.  The lesson I learned from these letters to Scott is if you see someone wasting their talents seeking approval from one particular person, it's okay to write abuse to them (seeing as Hemingway had few friends, perhaps this is the wrong lesson to take).  Seriously though, it's good to see that literary greats were people, too, and they got just as fed up when someone wasn't achieving their potential as we lowly readers do.

I highly recommend giving Ernest Hemingway on Writing a read.  It might not change your views on how to write (although mine did adjust a bit, when Hemingway said he only kept about 1 in 91 pages), but it will certainly bring this literary great down to a level where you can try to compete with him, and if you're not trying to be a champion at craft, then what is it all for?

How to Write a Damn Good Novel, A Review

All right ladies and gents, I promised you a review of a craft book that will kick your writing in the balls or punch it in the ovaries.  James N. Frey's How to Write a Damn Good Novel IS that craft book - just in case a curse in the title wasn't an indication of that.

This is a great book filled with information that will help you really see whether you have the perspective it takes to be a writer.  Frey opens with a segment on subspecies Homo Fictus, a term he uses to explain why fictional characters CANNOT be real people.  My favorite little segment on the Homo Fictus explains why your heroine should never, ever, ever be the "idiot in the attic."  Homo Fictus always behaves up to their maximum potential - never beyond, never beneath.  So, your teenage babysitter armed with a flashlight and an ever-present cell phone will not in fact storm the serial killer's lair in the attic.  She'll call the cops and get the heck out of Dodge.

By far the meat of the book focuses on the integral parts of storytelling, with special emphasis on how to create sympathetic characters by manipulating the opening situations and thus the reader's emotions.  To really hook a reader you, as the author, have to give the reader someone with whom they connect.  That doesn't mean your character has to be likable; look at Scrooge.  Dickens wants Scrooge to be loathed, and no one will contest that Dickens succeeded - otherwise why would "Scrooge" still be an insult over a century later?

The book ends with a rubric on how to assess one's writing groups.  This rubric was especially helpful to me, because I had just moved 1300 miles and had fallen in with a new writing group, a group that could have quickly damned my own push for writing mastery.  These writers had no negative comments to say about anything someone else brought in - in short this was a "fluff" group.  Unless you need a group to keep you coming back to the page (accountability is important for everyone), then the only group worth joining is one that will tear your work apart.  Frey calls these groups "destructive" but the fact is they're just serious about their craft.  If you don't have the guts to keep bringing in a piece for repeated stripping down and whipping, then you won't get any better.  This is also a good place to practice separating your self from your art.  You are not your novel, your novel is not your child, etc.  Your novel is a piece of work.  If a carpenter got upset at someone for criticizing a rickety table, do you think s/he'd ever make a dime?  Of course not.

This is my second favorite book on craft, and one that I cannot recommend highly enough.  Go out, buy it, read it, and if you don't feel that you're a better writer for it, leave a comment and I'll provide my e-mail address for your strongly-worded hate mail.

As always, thanks for reading.  Now get back to writing.

Your First Novel, a review

Here's a review of Your First Novel by Ann Rittenberg and Laura Whitberg.

This is a freebie, because honestly there's not much content that you can't get faster and better and with less "positive thinking"/"visualization"/"dreams can come true" bullshit from another book on craft.  Now, I'm on a bit of an anti-positive thinking kick,  because I'm reading Bright-Sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich.  If you're as tired of hearing "think it and it will come true" stories from Joel Osteen and his ilk, then this is a book that will be actually useful for you.

Your First Novel opens with a great foreword by Dennis Lehane and his overnight/ten year success that emphasizes the hard work it takes to be a writer, while the next two chapters encourage you to dream about your success, and it will be sure to come to you.  That is a load of bollocks.  Any writer worth their salt will try to tell you to steer clear of writing, to run while you still have a chance, but if you're reading this review and looking for books on craft, then it's already too late.

If you actually want something worth reading that's still inspirational, I'd recommend the NYT Writer's on Writing volumes I and II.  Essays about writing by writers, it's hard to beat.

Cheers, and write on, dear readers.