Write Away: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life [Hardcover]

Elizabeth George (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2, 2004

Here's what I tell my students on the first day when I teach one of my creative writing courses: You will be published if you possess three qualities -- talent, passion, and discipline.

In Write Away, New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George offers would-be writers exactly what they need to know about how to construct a novel. She provides a detailed overview of the craft and gives helpful instruction on all elements of writing, from setting and plot to technique and process. To illustrate her points, George presents excerpts from a number of well-known writers, including Barbara Kingsolver, Harper Lee, E. M. Forster, John Irving, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, and Alice Hoffman.

In addition to being a clear and concise guide to fiction writing, Write Away also opens a window into the life of Elizabeth George. It reveals the inspiring personal story of how the distinguished author came to be published and how she meticulously researches and crafts her novels.

I have a love-hate relationship with the writing life. I wouldn't wish to have any other kind of life . . . and on the other hand, I wish it were easier. And it never is. The reward comes sentence by sentence. The reward comes in the unexpected inspiration. The reward comes from creating a character who lives and breathes and is perfectly real. But such effort it takes to attain the reward! I would never have believed it would take such effort.

Elizabeth George started her career as a teacher and has spent several years teaching creative writing. She has a solid understanding of the craft and a storyteller's enticing way of passing along helpful information, all of which comes through marvelously in this informative book.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Here's a useful book for the novice writer battling the fears and insecurities that attend when she contemplates her first novel. Highly successful as the writer of a dozen novels of suspense (A Place of Hiding, etc.) and a teacher with significant experience, George reveals that those same fears and insecurities still bedevil her. She quickly moves beyond that to a consideration of the craft of writing-mastering the tools and techniques that a writer needs in order to create art. While George illustrates her points with passages from both her own works and those of numerous writers she admires (Martin Cruz Smith, Barbara Kingsolver, Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris), this remains more of a how-I-do-it book than a how-to-do-it book. Thus George will typically discuss an aspect of writing, such as creating the landscape of a novel, illustrate it with examples from various writers and then show how she approaches it. The result is an informative, instructive and idiosyncratic examination of the structure of the novel and of one writer's rigorously disciplined approach to creating one. George makes clear that writing is a job and that mastering the tools and techniques of the craft can go a long way toward making a writer successful. Finally, she advocates self-discipline, or what Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One) calls "bum glue." As George puts it, "A lot of writing is simply showing up... day after day, same time and same place." Both aspiring writers and fans of George's novels should enjoy the author's insights into the creative process.
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Review

“An impressively thorough and down-to-earth guide...a perfect DIY guide for the determined new novelist.” (Sunday Times (London) )

“An inclusive and enlightening examination of George’s thoughts on the craft of writing.” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer )

“A fabulous book for writers.” (Birmingham News )

“Elizabeth George knows her stuff. How well she knows it is readily apparent in Write Away.” (Bookreporter.com )

“You should buy the book to learn her novel-writing specifics. They’re there in spades.” (Orange County Register )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st edition (March 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060560428
• ISBN-13: 978-0060560423
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #717,307 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elizabeth George is the New York Times bestselling author of fourteen novels of psychological suspense, one book of nonfiction, and two short-story collections. Her work has been honored with the Anthony and Agatha awards, the Grand Prix de LittÉrature PoliciÈre, and the MIMI, Germany's prestigious prize for suspense fiction. She lives in Washington State.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elizabeth George's enthusiasm for writing will draw you in, March 19, 2004

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Write Away: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life (Hardcover)

Full disclosure: Elizabeth George is one of my all-time favorite mystery writers --- actually, George, like the others on that shortlist (including P.D. James and Ruth Rendell), writes in a more specific arm of the genre, known as the "literary mystery." What this means to readers is that the books these authors produce have complex characters, beautifully constructed (sometimes intricate) plots and fine, subtle use of language that manages to simultaneously contribute to the mystery at hand and to delight on its own.

What this means to writers is that Elizabeth George knows her stuff. How well she knows it is readily apparent in WRITE AWAY: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life, because she grounds most of her instructional examples in excerpts from great literature, including classics like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and modern suspense/thriller novels such as MYSTIC RIVER. George taught English at El Toro High School in Huntington Beach, California for over a decade before turning her back away from the lectern and towards her computer screen in the mid-1980s, and she now frequently teaches creative writing. Her pedantry is of the pleasant variety, meant not to bury potential writers but to encourage them.

Still, this book does have its pedantic moments, especially as George elucidates her process. One of the most important parts of her process is creating a "character map" before she begins her first draft. As she explained why and how she does this, it made perfect sense --- for her. I love reading literary mysteries, but they are not a genre I'm likely to write myself. WRITE AWAY, at first, seemed to me to be an excellent way to learn about how to write an Elizabeth George novel. Indeed, it's not as if she's hiding what she's doing: her subtitle says it all. And she begins each chapter with a brief section from one of her own journals kept while writing in order to show that even published authors get the blues.

Yet, from the moment I began to read George's book, I was drawn in by her enthusiasm for writing. She may have been describing what works for her, but her energy and excitement made me want to discover what works best for me. George is quite right when she says that she is puzzled by those who believe writing can't be taught; it is, after all, at least halfways a craft. In the sections where she discusses different techniques as "tools" and says that using these well is part of a building process, she reminded me that artisanal skill can be just as important as artistic inspiration.

George also reminds would-be, struggling and working writers that all the art and craft in the world can't help if you don't have discipline; her chapter titled "The Value of Bum Glue" (that colorful noun taken from Australian bestselling author Bryce Courtenay) should be read by every writer and writing student in the country. But one of the last things she hits on, while not new under the sun, is made urgent again by her own thoughtful, elegant prose: "Lots of people want to have written; they don't want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not at the beginning. To reach that end you have to be willing just to set it aside, knowing that it may never happen at all but not much caring because it's the writing that matters to you; it's the mystery and the magic of putting words on paper that are truly important. If you don't feel this way, then you want to be an author, not a writer."

On one hand, I wonder why she didn't put that up front. On the other, I see exactly why she saved these words for last. Great mystery writer that she is, Elizabeth George has forced us to march through the forest tree by tree before revealing her secret.

--- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Overview for Beginning Writers, July 15, 2005

By 

John C. Dunbar (Sugar Land, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Write Away: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life (Hardcover)

The author, Elizabeth George, presents the process she follows when writing novels. She does not present it as a panacea but describes the benefits of her approach. The author says she's left-brained and must plan her novels. She also says she must start with the main characters first, and after they are well devloped the story nearly writes itself. She also believes in researching out her setting because she wants the settings to be be as realistic as possible. She may combine the descriptions of several real buildings into one scene. I think her discussions of characters, setting, and her overall process are the best parts of her book.

Her process can be summarized as: come up with the Idea for the story, develop it further into an Expanded Idea (read the book for details), invent the Primary Initiating Event, derive the initial cut of the Characters, develop detailed Biographies for them, Research the story (how to do it), create the Characters, create the Settings, create a Step Outline (phrases for each of 15 or so scenes, all scenes placed on one page), then create a Plot Outline (stream-of-consciousness expansion of each scene), write the Rough Draft, do a Fast Read, write an Editorial Letter to yourself describing the deep changes needed, Second Revision, have the Second Draft read by an informed reader (the Cold Reader), do a Third Draft, mail it off.

There's much more than this process discussed: dialog, subtexting, THAD's, etc.

I enjoyed the book very much and was most pleased with the practical advice by this author.

John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, January 11, 2006

By 

B. Booth (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Write Away: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life (Hardcover)

I had never heard of, or read, Elizabeth George's books until Write Away. I think it is an excellent reference book on writing. (I am now an avid Lynley series fan too.)

E.George gives a step-by-step plan for writing a novel in Write Away that focuses heavily on process details. The more writing books I read, the more I feel that this book is most helpful for seeing the details of writing. For example, how to create character backgrounds, how to research setting, how to write out a plot summary. I found this type of information useful and concrete. If you are a writer, and you don't have a "plan" for how to get your story out of your head and onto the page, then this is an excellent book to read for ideas.

Usually, I borrow reference books like these from the library to decide if the book is useful enough to purchase. Write Away was, and now my paperback copy is sitting on my desk where I can easily grab it.