Only as Good as Your Word: Writing Lessons from My Favorite Literary Gurus [Paperback]

Susan Shapiro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 31, 2007

In this funny, moving, and revealing ride, Susan Shapiro recounts her obsessive quest for success as a professional writer and the beloved mentors who saved her life — and career — along the way.

Growing up in the Midwest, Susan Shapiro knew at a young age that all she wanted in life was to become a writer. And so, as soon as she graduated from college, she headed straight to New York City, determined to break into the biz. A few hard knocks later, she learned that it takes more than being a good writer to make a living at it — the most successful professional writers, she discovered, have great mentors to support, promote, advise, admonish, inform, infuriate, and sometimes give them a good kick in the pants along the way.

Only As Good As Your Word is a rollicking chronicle of Shapiro's coming of age as a journalist and author. It's also a revealing memoir that proves what Shapiro's been saying all along: The most important lessons about writing really are, at heart, important lessons about life.

A must-read for all writers in the publishing trenches, from the very green to the veterans.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Since moving to New York in 1981 at age 20, Shapiro has realized her dream: she has written articles for the New York Times, Washington Post, Salon.com and Glamour, and three memoirs. In this lively, inspiring and dishy memoir/advice book, she shares the secrets of her success, some learned the hard way, others gleaned from her stellar array of mentors, including Ian Frazier and Howard Fast (who was married to her mother's cousin). Fast's wife, Bette, also provided young Susan with advice: get your own career and money, so the men can't control you.... But cooking and wearing a dress won't make you a Barbie doll. Fast himself cautioned her against self-indulgence: just get to work. Remember, a plumber never gets plumber's block. Shapiro made other connections on her own as a grad student at NYU, which led to a job as a researcher at the New Yorker, which led to more connections. Not everybody's going to have a bestselling relative, but everybody has a high school English teacher—that was Shapiro's first guru—and she makes it clear that she learned as much from him as she did from her high-profile mentors. (Oct.)
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Review

In the guise of celebrating her gurus, a number of whom seem also to be co-conspirators, Susan Shapiro demonstrates that she is as much a mentor as mentee. Not only that, but she provides what amounts to nothing less than a survival guide for freelancers in her own inimitable voice - at once witty and intimate. -- Victor Navasky former editor of The Nation, author of Naming Names

One can never have enough mentors, and in ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR WORD, Susan Shapiro writes, with humor and brutal, unrelenting honesty, about a long career spent finding them, courting them, appreciating them, fighting with them, mourning them. And now, she can add, honoring them. A roadmap - along with an invitation and a warning - for aspiring writers to crack New York. -- David Margolick, Vanity Fair contributing editor, author of Beyond Glory

Susan Shapiro has a pure writer's soul. The attention and care she has received from others, she has returned by becoming a guardian angel to young writers. ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR WORD is ardent, enthusiastic, intelligent and very funny. -- Alec Wilkinson New Yorker staff writer, author of My Mentor: A Young Writer's Friendship With William Maxwell

Wise, detailed, fast-paced and hilarious memoir about making it as a writer and the universal importance of cultivating relationships.

Before breaking into books, Shapiro (Lighting Up: How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking and Everything Else I Loved in Life Except Sex, 2004, etc.) thrived for 20 years as a freelance essayist at the nation's top magazines and newspapers. Now a journalism and creative-writing teacher at New York University and the New School, she doles out invaluable advice for aspiring scribes. Pulling back the curtain to reveal what it takes to earn a living with words, she emphasizes the usefulness of exploiting one's obsessions, writing about people you love and realizing that a page a day is a book a year. Shapiro's engaging stories about her career trajectory are replete with missteps. She provides guidance on transforming private humiliations into hilarity for the public forum and asserts that when it comes to getting published, `no' never actually means `no.' Her four-year stint at the New Yorker offers proof that flattery always helps with the literary in-crowd. (Hint: Writers love having their work quoted back to them.) Divided into chapters by advisers, starting with the high-school teacher who taught her that the secret to good writing is rewriting, the book is a testament to gratitude, people skills and perseverance. On the merit of not indulging a tendency toward procrastination, Shapiro imparts, "Remember, a plumber never gets plumber's block." In her illuminating portraits of former New York Times Book Review editor Michael Anderson and her famous cousin Howard Fast, Shapiro depicts these mentors with a combination of respect and unaffected objectivity, secure that she's found her own footing in the field. The book's final chapters, which explain how to find a great mentor and be a good protégé, should be required reading for all would-be writers.

Practical, timeless truths about personal and professional success in print and in life. -- Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2007

With an irresistible energy and winning humor that come at you in a rush, and a breathtakingly frank honesty that undercuts any potential schmaltz, Susan Shapiro's superb account of significant mentors is one of the best books I know about the writing life. It also has invaluable insights about the educational process by which one attains an assertive literary self. All in all, a terrific read. -- Phillip Lopate author of Against Joie de Vivre and Getting Personal

You think you're a writer? Read this book. It's everything you wanted to know about getting published but were too full of yourself (or too insecure) to ask...Susan Shapiro spares no egos in this fierce, candid, compelling memoir of making it to print any way you can. Unputdownable. -- Gael Greene, New York Magazine critic, author of Insatiable

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press (August 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580052207
• ISBN-13: 978-1580052207
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,108,182 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan B. Shapiro is the acclaimed author of FIVE MEN WHO BROKE MY HEART, LIGHTING UP, SECRETS OF A FIX-UP FANATIC, ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR WORD and two novels, SPEED SHRINKING and OVEREXPOSED. She teaches "the instant gratification takes too long" school of writing at The New School and in private classes and workshops. You can visit her at her website Susanshapiro.net or email her directly at [e-mail]

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and Helpful Memoir Any Writer Will Enjoy, September 10, 2007

By 

Rachel Kramer Bussel "Cupcakes Take the Cake ... (New York City) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Only as Good as Your Word: Writing Lessons from My Favorite Literary Gurus (Paperback)

Susan Shapiro's highly entertaining as well as helpful memoir details both her writing career and her complex, sometimes tumultuous relationships with a series of mentors. She starts out sharing her youthful, high school ambition, which is nurtured by her literature teacher Jack Zucker. Right away, the contrast between Zucker and her family, especially her father, is made clear, and this ongoing split is alluded to throughout the book; clearly, Shapiro's mentors gave her something her family of origin was unable to.

In smart, lively prose, Shapiro chronicles her move from dedicated poet to book reviewer, interviewer, article writer and finally memoirist. She forms several intense friendships with writers and others who captivate her, and it's these outsize personalities, varied, quirky, unusual, and each in a different stage of life, career and genre, that make this such an interesting read. Shapiro makes no bones about not always having an easy relationship with her mentors, including their disagreements and squabbles, and in the chapter on Howard Fast, she airs some family history that some might consider dirty laundry. Yet she also details a relationship built on respect for the written word, showing how she got to know this renowned member of her family as one writer to another. She sends him her work and basks in his praise, but also has her own strong opinions about which of his books are best.

One of the best things about the book is how Shapiro shows, often in a subtle but still clear way, how her mentors were just as affected by their relationships with her as she was by them. It's not a one-sided "This is what I know" relationship; she argues with her mentors, cajoles them, and tangles with them. Even her premise that each mentor told her some essential lie shows that wise students can see the flaws of their mentors. She doesn't shy away from stating where she believes her mentors erred or where they may have hurt her, though throughout the book it's clear that Shapiro reveres each of her mentors in her own way, writing about not just what they did for her, but how they impacted the world via their work and example.

Some of the best chapters, such as the juicy one on her cousin Howard Fast, and the remarkable 95-year-old Ruth Gruber, portray highly iconoclastic, often stubborn, writers who are set in their ways and don't necessarily want to change (though Gruber's addition to Shapiro's writing workshop is clearly a bonus for everyone involved). The soup kitchen chapter, ostensibly about Ian Frazier but really about the people Shapiro met while teaching at a soup kitchen, is also powerful and shows the many reasons, aside from simply getting published, people have for turning to writing. There, Shapiro writes that "writing was a way of taking the worst things in life and turning them into the most beautiful," and that's literally the case in this moving chapter.

Shapiro mixes memoir and her own writing ups and downs with the lessons her mentors imparted and bits of advice for other writers. She also takes us on a tour of literary New York, going inside the New Yorker and into the mechanics of running a weekly workshop, as well as some of the workings of the New York Times Book Review and the world of book reviewing generally. Her parting words on "How To Be a Protégé" take a real-life example of a woman coming to Shapiro for advice and breaks down the dos and don't's one needs to find a mentor like the fine ones Shapiro has cultivated.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gutsy and engrossing, April 12, 2008

By 

Sarah E. Yost "tea tree and rest" (Wichita, KS United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Only as Good as Your Word: Writing Lessons from My Favorite Literary Gurus (Paperback)

Susan Shapiro's engrossing memoir about the mentoring relationship is a welcome addition to my shelves of books on writing. Though it doesn't detail much new writing advice, I welcome the same ole words repackaged. The writing life is so solitary and replete with godawful voices telling me how bad my writing is that I need to hear again that determination, willingness and turning in assignments error-free and on time will get me farther than anything.

Beyond the gossipy name-dropping (which I love) is a deeper analysis of Shapiro's relationships with her mentors. She goes beyond recounting their courtship and the writing lessons she learned from them. She also exposes their flaws and describes how their relationships evolved from a student at the feet of the master to two humans walking together, not always gracefully.

Shapiro is gutsy and it seems nothing is sacred. Neither her secrets nor her subjects are safe. Still, I read this memoir, the first of hers I've read, as if I were her student, studying at the feet of a master who's been there, still doing that. Highly recommended for any writer.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A BOOK OF ENCOURAGEMENT FOR WRITERS, YOUNG AND OLD, September 17, 2007

By 

Bernard A. Sznaider (Beautiful Royal Oak, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Only as Good as Your Word: Writing Lessons from My Favorite Literary Gurus (Paperback)

I was in Borders book store recently and was delightfully surprised to be there when Susan Shapiro spoke about her new book. I especially liked the question and answer period and wished that I could have had a CD of it to pass on to a friends daughter, a young, aspiring and gifted writer. After reading Susan's book, I can say that this is not only a book for my friends daughter or others like her, but for all writers hopeful of being published. Susan's story is a compliment to the American work ethic, and the possibilities of fulfilling ones dreams in this great country of ours. Her book displays this, and also is a guide for all of us to follow as a mentor, a giver and a doer in all walks of life, not just in writing. She, being part of a writing and publishing program in a New York City soup kitchen was so inspiring for me, that I want to pass the idea on for the down and out to tell their story, and you can do the same. We all have something to say, and Susan shows us the way to find those that will listen. After reading her book, I now consider myself a student of hers. So when asked for my writing credentials , I'll say, "I'm a student of Susan Shapiro". WOW! And if your a romantic as I am, then you'll love this books flavor and fall in love with its Susan the heroine, wearing her motorcycle jacket, sweatshirt, ripped jeans and cowboy boots. Not only is she a talented writer, but see the photo of her on the back cover of her book about neurotic men and you'll see that she's a "Real Betty", meaning, a "Real Beauty", as mentioned in the film "Clueless". The film will also give a clue of how life was for her while growing up in the opulent Bloomfield Hills area of MI. She's a herione trying to make a big difference in her own little way. A woman to die for, if you know what I mean. And as the song go's by the Chi Lites, "Have You Seen Her, Have You Seen Her-r-r?" I plan on reading all of Susan's books and the books of the authors that she has mentioned. (Bernard has written articles on, "Continual Improvement" in his field and is probably known throughout the world in this area due to them. He is a hot rodder of North Woodward fame, and who's car, a 1957 Hemi Powered Plymouth, was used to advertise the Internationally known,"Woodward Dream Cruise"(96) on local TV. He has also written articles for Cruis' News Magazine about his drag racing experiences, on Woodward.)