Customer Reviews

Rules of Thumb: 71 Authors Reveal Their Fiction Writing Fixations

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love this book, which I happened upon at Barnes & Noble. The feel and aesthetics drew me to it, and the font and layout won me over. Like so many of these types of books for and by writers, I figured there was a likelihood that much of the writing inside would be of dubious quality or real merit, and contributed by the workshop people that give that stereotype its oomph.

Instead, 98% of the writings are intelligent, interesting, and with unique voice. And there are a handful--maybe 9 or 10--that connect personally to me in a way of such value that I sort of hugged the book in recognition and gratefulness.

I love this book and find it unique in its genre, standing head and shoulders above most others in quality, merit, intelligence, and humor.

Rules of Thumb has a neat layout and odd size that makes it a great coffeetable book. Unfortunately, that's not what I was looking for.
This is not a book for specifics on the craft. The 73 notations by published authors in this book are everything serious writers will hear at writing meetings, conferences and critique groups. They are, in some cases, inspirational, but don't offer the specifics new writers need for structure and development.
This might work as a nice, general gift if you have a friend who is a writer and you don't know which books on structure they might like. If you are a serious writer, I recommend spending cash first on Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell. It's much more specific and incredibly witty.

I'm a little disturbed by the previous post. As a writer, I find it absurd that I must be a drunk, wracked with insecurities, or tortured by my religious quest in order to write affecting fiction. This is an old ideal perpetuated by people who romanticize the writing life, most of whom have never lived it. The point of the book is to offer small meditations on writing and the ACT of writing. I found most of them to be insightful and inspiring. There are plenty of books on how writers abuse and torture themselves. Trust me--plenty of 16 year-old aspiring writers read them and then think that is how they must live in order to write "true" fiction. It's ok to be average (not that I think most of the contributers are) and a writer. And just because you are average, doesn't mean you will write average fiction. It's a beautiful book. Buy it.

If you enjoy reading opinions, regardless of the amount or quality of thought behind them, then you should enjoy this. The quality varies wildly. Most of the contributors teach writing in some capacity, and most have won some manner of award for writing that validates their expertise. At least one specifically advises against writing "artfully", but it is clear that many of them consider their work to be Art above that created by the common hack (and that writing can be judged based on rules learned in Creative Writing 101 alone). Take, for example, the oft mentioned rule "don't use adverbs in attributives". The wiser contributors recognize that rules like this are not make-or-break factors in good writing. Erin McGraw comments "Interior movement should be balanced by external action - unless you're Virginia Woolf. War stories will not have cross-gender appeal - unless you're Erich Maria Remarque. Ditto love stories, unless you're Jane Austen. A man I know set up his computer to alert him in red every time he typed an adverb, so passionately did he oppose modifiers in the predicate. He almost had a coronary when he read Flaubert." Steve Almond contributes an extremely well-written and insightful essay on the very subject of the attributive. (This, and Frederick Barthelme's essay on the 39 steps of writing nearly redeem the entire book). On the poorer side of this example, there is Jane Yolen's "Four Rules". Her second rule is "Go relatively easy on adverbs. There is a rumor that a standalone volume could have been made just using all the adverbs in J.K. Rowling's fourth Harry Botter book. I cant say that for sure, as I bombed out on my Harry Potter reading after the thrid book [...]". OK - maybe she consciously wrote this as a negative example? Maybe the points she was REALLY trying to make were 1) Don't use a book you haven't even read as an example, 2) Don't throw a more successful author's name into your essay just so that it shows up in the index to make people flip to your essay, 3) Don't forget to include ACTUAL examples of bad writing that illustrate your point, and 4) Don't let your sour grapes show. (Or, to paraphrase Stephen King from his excellent "On Writing" - don't look down your nose at any author that is being successfully published). The book is actually quite long, if you take the time to sit down and read every essay. Unfortunately, the gems are few and far between. Without doubt there is food for thought here. Just make sure you critically assess THIS writing, as you would all other!

This book about writing rules of thumb can be summed up in four tidy rules:

Rule #1: Teach
Rule #2: Don't leave the house (except to teach)
Rule #3: Drink lots of coffee
Rule #4: Lead a careful life

This is not a book about writers as writers; this is a book about writers as editors - most are creative writing teachers - which explains the scholarly rather than magical tone of their submissions.

They talk about how, by either breaking, bending or obeying writing rules, their creative work was inspired. No one has a `fixation' of losing themselves in composing prose. No. The one life rule they all share - which becomes an unwritten writing rule - is to be very sure of themselves.

None confess to the alcohol-induced mania of a Raymond Carver (Rule: Be an alcoholic) or the "Christ-haunted" conflicts of Flannery O'Connor (Rule: Be tormented) or the hardscrabble childhood of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Rule: Be poor) or the wunderlust of Ernest Hemingway (Rule: Be adventurous). They are very normal, sensible, coffee-drinking people (Rule: Be ordinary).

It's a reference book suitable for the classroom. And on those merits and its excellent production, it earns five stars. On its exploration of rules in the "bloody bullring" it earns only one. The rule of thumb regarding averages, then, gives this tidy work three stars.