About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews [Hardcover]

Samuel R. Delany (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 4, 2006

Award-winning novelist Samuel R. Delany has written a book for creative writers to place alongside E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Lajos Egri's Art of Dramatic Writing. Taking up specifics (When do flashbacks work, and when should you avoid them? How do you make characters both vivid and sympathetic?) and generalities (How are novels structured? How do writers establish serious literary reputations today?), Delany also examines the condition of the contemporary creative writer and how it differs from that of the writer in the years of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the high Modernists. Like a private writing tutorial, About Writing treats each topic with clarity and insight. Here is an indispensable companion for serious writers everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

During his tenure as professor of English and creative writing at Temple University, Delany has become almost as well known for his criticism as for his award-winning science fiction. His latest nonfiction book is a compilation of finely nuanced essays, letters, and interviews devoted to the craft of writing. After a long, autobiographical introduction comes a pair of essays, "Teaching/Writing" and "Thickening the Plot," that grew out of Delany's experience with the renowned Clarion Workshops. In the remaining essays, as well as in five interviews for assorted periodicals and four letters to fellow authors, Delany expounds on the many elements of good writing. An extended appendix of "nits, nips, tucks and tips" probes such topics as dialogue and dramatic structure for the benefit of novice authors. Although Delany's strong associations with sf may limit the audience for this masterfully written volume, it deserves a reading by aspiring wordsmiths in every genre. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"... should go on the short list of required reading for every would-be writer."--New York Times Book Review (on "Of Doubts and Dreams" in About Writing)

"Enlightening and useful. I would place this book with Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury."--Gavin Grant, co-editor, The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror

"Delany has certainly spent more time thinking about the process of generating narratives--and subsequently getting the fruits of his lucubrations down on paper--than any other writer in the genre. ...Delany's latest volume in this vein (About Writing) might be his best yet... Truly, as the jacket copy boasts, this book is the next best thing to taking one of Delany's courses... (R)eaders will find many answers here to the mysteries of getting words down on a page."--Paul DiFilippo, Asimov's Science Fiction

"If you are, like me, a writer--or if you are, also like me involved in the teaching of writing--you regularly find yourself reading books about writing because you are intent upon finding the perfect writer's instructional resource. Well, About Writing may, in fact, be that resource. Seven Essays focus on the different aspects of what Delany calls "the mechanics of fiction"; correspondence and interviews contain "advice on the art of fiction as well as [Delany's] views on the state of contemporary fiction...The result is a revelation on the art of fiction: how it is created, how the writer's image influences the perception of art, and how that art fits into today's world." Finally, About Writing contains 13 appendixes' each is an exquisite "mini-workshop," with topics such as "Grammar and Parts of Speech," "Dramatic Structure," "Point of View," and more. To some readers, Delany the novelist is linked to science fiction (he has won Hugo and Nebula awards), and to other readers, he is recognized as an innovative artist whose work has earned him the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime's contribution to gay and lesbian literature. However, as many students from Temple University and hundreds of writers' workshops already know. Delany is an inspiration and meticulous teacher who has taught creative writing for over 35 years. Now, because of this highly recommended collection, all writers--and teachers of writing--can enjoy and learn from Delany's indispensable guidance." --Multicultural Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan (January 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819567159
• ISBN-13: 978-0819567154
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,725,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, astringent, yet leavened with a generous humanity., January 12, 2006

By 

B. T. Conway "BTC" (East Hampton, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews (Paperback)

Delany has one of the most penetrating minds of anyone writing in English. This book should be a first resource for anyone considering writing novels--Delany discusses it as the serious pursuit that it is. I find myself reconsidering many aspects of my own writing, and not always comfortably. I'll be a better writer for it.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing, difficult, worth it writing book, March 6, 2006

By 

KTB "KTB" (NYC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews (Paperback)

I had the pleasure of reading this book before it reached the final draft. I have found the book almost as valuable as the teaching I recieved from the man himself. Though this is not a book for the light reader, if you give it time Delany will reveal many truths about writing and writers. Yes, it's academic, because this book is aimed at those who seek to become writers, and that is as much an academic pursuit as an artistic one. Delany won't coddle you and won't give you feel good platitudes about what it takes to be a writer. What he will give you is a solid basis for starting a writing career. It's not a pretty road to travel, and certainly not an easy one. This is an excellent roadmap.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great reference tool for the serious writer, November 28, 2008

By 

Jubei K. "spiku" (Evanston, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews (Paperback)

For writers, About Writing is a drop-everything-and-read-right-now kind of book that can be used while you're going over your outline, while you're writing a scene or a chapter, and while you're revising that scene or chapter. This is not the kind of book you'll want to wait until the end of writing to read, rather you should consider using About Writing as a reference during the process. For teachers, his Introduction, essays, and appendix could be useful tools in an intermediate to advanced fiction writing course--although not as hand outs but as points of discussion.

Do not skip the Preface or the Introduction, as both are packed with ideas on good writing versus talented writing, which will make you study each paragraph of your writing for clarity and language. Of his essays, "Some Notes for the Intermediate and Advanced Creative Writing Student" is the most inspired and inspiring. This essay is on narrative structure, but more than that, it is about breaking away from the formulaic narrative structures that can hold a novel to mediocre writing. He advocates knowing the old structure in order to revise or subvert it. He makes a point of differentiating plot and structure: "Plot exists as a synopsis that often has no correspondence to text.... Structure exists, however, only in terms of a particular text, so that to talk about it in any specificity or detail you must constantly be pointing to one part of a page or another, at these words or at those: structure is specifically the organization of various and varied textual units." (p. 144)

Of his letters, read Letter to Q--. It is a criticism of Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye, from the intention of the writer to the failure of the historical milieu to the biased discussion on intra-racial discrimination. It's a brilliant rant: "I begrudge no one his or her enjoyment of Morrison's novel. Still, I feel obliged to say: If a reader thinks this story gives an accurate or even a meaningful portrait either of the subjective lives of dark-skinned black or of light-skinned blacks, that reader knows none of us. And that goes for black readers as well as white." (p. 176)

His interviews were included because he sees them as a form of written work, because he received the questions in writing and answered them in writing. This section could have been strengthened with the interview, "Black to the Future," which discusses William Gibson's critically acclaimed and popular Cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer.

About Writing ends with an appendix on various topics, from POV to punctuation to a discussion of the axiom: write what you know. If you only read the appendix, you'd still be better off now that where you were as a writer before.

The primary strength of About Writing is the many ways Delany discusses writing from the point of view of writer, reader, a teacher, and a critic.

The primary weakness is that the package deal of Delany's experience, success, and knowledge comes with a tone that can be off-putting, a tone supported by his edict in the Preface that only serious writers should read About Writing.