BOOKS FOR WRITERS

"The Lost Suitcase" by Nicholas Delbanco "The Quotable Writer" edited by William A. Gordon "The Art of Fiction" by Ayn Rand "Writing the Thriller" by T. Macdonald Skillman "A Year in the Life: Journaling" by Sheila Bender

Elsewhere in the book, Delbanco works from another tidbit of literary history, a comment the Duke of Gloucester made to Edward Gibbon in 1781. "Another damned, thick, square book!" Gloucester said to Gibbon. "Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?" From this comes a tantalizing riff on why we write, who reads, how writers are viewed by society, and the nature of a writer's legacy. (About the legacy, he notes, even Gibbon, the author of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," "is largely now remembered as the butt of man's joke.")

Throughout these essays, which also touch on travel, teaching, parenting daughters, and the changed role of writers in society, Delbanco returns again and again to the relationship between fiction and biography and how the two forms draw so differently from the same source. While "fiction is a web of lies that attempts to entangle a truth," he says, "autobiography may well be the reverse: data tricked out and rearranged to invent a fictive self." And while a biographer must piece together the context in which a snippet of life occurs, "the very sort of information a biographer requires," says Delbanco, "may at a given moment come to impede the novelist." Finally, though, whether one is writing fact or fiction, one can't proceed unless the imagination is engaged. And "it is seldom possible to gauge beforehand what will prove a fruitful topic or which anecdote will fire the imagination," muses Delbanco. "Some matters move us, some do not. The writer gleans wind-scraps; he listens whenever he can." Read more

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It is hard to be ambivalent about Ayn Rand. Rand spoke in absolutes, and either you buy it or you don't. There is plenty of fiber and nutritious material in this book, but the Rand agnostic may find it hard to digest. Rand's ego is enormous and her dismissiveness petty most every step of the way. "In regard to precision of language," says Rand, who uses her work throughout the book to exemplify her points, "I think I myself am the best writer today." But woe to any other author, excluding Victor Hugo, Mickey Spillane, and, with reservations, Dostoyevsky. "To see how not to write," advises Rand, "read [Thomas Wolfe's] descriptive passages." Sinclair Lewis, she says, is a "perceptive but superficial observer." James Joyce? "He is worse than Gertrude Stein.... He uses words from different languages, makes up some words of his own, and calls that literature."

Still, Rand does have some useful things to say to the fiction writer. Perhaps most important is her emphatic belief in the concrete. "In order to be completely free with words," she intones, "you must know countless concretes under your abstractions." It is only the concrete, she adds, that will lead the reader to your abstractions, your themes. Along related lines, Rand believes firmly that "if a writer feels that he was unable fully to express what he wanted to express, it means that he did not know clearly what he wanted to express"--no more blaming it on writer's block for you! And remember: "A good style is one that conveys the most with the greatest economy of words." This means that "when you draw a character, everything that you say about him acquires significance by the mere fact of being included in your story." The bottom line is that "art is selectivity." Read more

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For the book's final 60 pages, Skillman hands the baton to 11 thriller writers. From Clive Cussler ("Flood Tide"), we learn that never growing up is "a pretty good prerequisite for writing action-adventure novels." Both Michael Connelly ("Blood Work") and Tess Gerritsen ("Bloodstream") discuss how their genre can be used to tap into what ills the near future holds. Richard North Patterson ("Degree of Guilt") likes to consult with psychologists to get a handle on his characters' motivations, while Mary Willis Walker ("All the Dead Lie Down") loves "doing research that feels a little bit risky." And any thriller writer would be wise to keep John Gilstrap's ("Nathan's Run") words in mind: "If you're going to write convincing suspense, you ought to be scared of it yourself." Read more

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"A Year in the Life: Journaling for Self-Discovery"
by Sheila Bender
It's a pity this book is presented solely as a tool for greater self-knowledge. Don't get us wrong: there's nothing wrong with introspection, and "A Year in the Life" helps train your gaze to far greater reaches than your navel. But there are so many fine writing exercises here, taking their cues from so many wonderful sources, that it would be a pity for the subtitle ("Journaling for Self-Discovery") to scare off any writer in search of a good workout. Author Sheila Bender's premise is that "journaling can help you emotionally, spiritually, and physically, as well as with your writing." Bender offers 52 journaling exercises, one for each week of the year. Each exercise is accompanied with a series of six "extensions," for those writers ambitious enough to take their pens for a daily jog. (At the back of the book is a generous handful of exercises geared toward specific holidays and life events.) One week, we are asked to write about the secrets we are keeping. Another has us consider a question we were asked that hurt or offended us. In still another, we are invited to recall a game from childhood. Some of the most enticing exercises are those inspired by the writings of others. Frank O'Hara wrote a poem in which the sun conversed with him--you can, too. Gary Snyder wrote a poem called "Things to Do Around a Lookout"; you can pick your own place to write about in similar fashion. And try writing, as Frances Mayes does in "Under the Tuscan Sun," about a time when you were "a guest at a table of people you didn't know." Read more

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