A witty, generous guide.
Pithy nuggets on writing well.
Novelist, short story writer, and memoirist McCracken draws on her experiences as a student, writer, and creative writing teacher to offer 280 concise reflections—not rules, but guidelines—on writing fiction. Confessing a dislike for craft books and skepticism about the value of workshop critiques, still she acknowledges the value of sharing insights, some gleaned from teaching, many from failures and frustrations in her own work. “I try not to dispense imperatives,” she says. Organized by “vague broad concepts, digressions, flights of fancy,” the book covers topics typical of any writing guide: generating ideas, outlining, types of narrators (first person, singular or plural; second person; third). “All narrative decisions,” McCracken advises, “are more interesting when you think about the mobility they grant you instead of the mobility they restrict.” Narrators, in other words, should fit a writer’s goals. “Beware of any dispenser of writing advice who deems one sort of narrator better than another.” Writers would do well to be wary of any hard and fast rules: about the use of present or past tense, punctuation, and process. “No process is wrong that leads to the first draft of a book,” she asserts. As for the dictum “Write what you know,” she thinks it’s simply silly. “If you already know it—if there’s no mystery—what’s the point in writing it?” She does hold strong opinions, though, on such matters as adverbs, writing about children, and the much-debated concept of “voice.” She cautions beginning writers against looking for approval: “Why do I write these days? I want to be loved. But I don’t care whether anybody approves of me.” Every writer, she believes, has the same mantra: “I am a genius with much to learn.”
A witty, generous guide.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780063375291
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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