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Revision as of 12:25, 22 September 2012
, 12:25, 22 September 2012no edit summary
The Guardian newspaper has for some years now been publishing articles and interviews on how to write. Successful authors, agents and publishers have offered pearls of wisdom in the Guardian Masterclasses for genres as wide-ranging as travel writing, picture books and screenplays. Now their wisdom and their insights have been collected together in this slim volume which will intrigue both the readers and the writers among us.
The book is small, but it does contain a generous number of gems. The editor, Phil Daoust, has adopted a simple structure. The first section deals with the actual nuts and bolts of how to write. Various people have contributed essays, and they deal with such fundamental matters as dialogue, plot, description and the all-important and elusive quality known as voice. [[:Category|:Andrew Miller|Andrew Miller]], author of ''Oxygen'', points out that even if you can't remember the plot of a Sherlock Holmes story you are more than likely to feel you know a lot about the hero and his sidekick Watson. Meg Rosoff, who wrote — among other best-selling books — the award-winning [[How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff|How I Live Now]], draws fascinating comparisons between finding your own distinctive voice and the discipline of dressage. And [[:Category:M J Hyland|MJ Hyland]] (''Carry Me Down'') delves into his stores of wisdom to offer seven techniques for coping with the traumas of redrafting and revising. Unfortunately, his essay suggests, your book isn't finished just because you've crawled your weary way through the dénouement to the last page and triumphantly typed THE END.
Following this is a more light-hearted section in which twenty-two of our best-known writers each produce a list of rules—''dos and don'ts from the greats''. [[:Category:Margaret Atwood|Margaret Atwood]] advocates taking two pencils when travelling by plane (one is no good because in these safety-conscious days no self-respecting airline will allow you to carry a blade, even if you insist it is only a pencil sharpener). More than one of the writers featured here recommend long walks to help you clarify your thinking (and also, though they're too polite to say it, to counteract the effect of all those long hours in front of a computer screen with only the biscuit barrel for company). [[:Category:Neil Gaiman|Neil Gaiman]] offers the most succinct piece of advice (''Write.'') which will only seem strange to people who do not know the manifold subterfuges authors practise to avoid that terrible moment of sitting down at the computer and getting down to business, and Colm Tóibín sings the praises of 'mental pyjamas'.
