Samuel Delany Will Come Into Your House And Shred Your Notebooks

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Loved this review - must get!

>
> Samuel
> <http://io9.com/5138216/samuel-delany-will-come-into-your-house-and-shred-yo
> ur-notebooks>  Delany Will Come Into Your House And Shred Your Notebooks
>
>
> By Charlie Jane <http://io9.com/people/charliejane/posts/>  Anders, 1:40
> <http://io9.com/5138216/samuel-delany-will-come-into-your-house-and-shred-yo
> ur-notebooks>  PM on Fri Jan 23 2009, 1,102 views
>
> http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/io9/2009/01/9780819567161.jpgSamuel
> Delany <http://io9.com/tag/samuel-delany/>  not only helped redefine 
> science
> fiction, he's one of a few SF writers who teach writing at the college
> level. So I was excited to see he'd written a book about writing.
>
> The book in question, About Writing, isn't quite what I'd expected from
> someone who's been teaching creative writing for the past thirty years. 
> It's
> definitely not a style guide or a tutorial on fiction writing. (The book's
> subtitle, "7 essays, 4 letters & 5 interviews," could be a bit of a clue.)
> Instead, it's Delany's ruminations, gathered over the years, about both 
> the
> craft of fiction writing and the writer's life in general.
>
> There are fantastic insights in there, as well as advice that might make 
> you
> rethink everything about your approach to fiction writing - even if you 
> end
> up disagreeing with some of it.
>
> http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/io9/2009/01/2521891156_b8ca0fbc5b_o.jp
> gYou have to have a bit of patience, though. Delany says, in the book's
> intro, that he doesn't think you can talk about how to write fiction,
> without also discussing why people write fiction, and the world in which 
> we
> write it:
>
> [This book] deals with three other topics and the relations between them.
> One - which it shares with most books on writing - is, yes, the art of
> writing fiction. The other two are far less often discussed in classes and
> rarely figure in such "how-to" books. First, how is the world structured -
> specifically the socio-aesthetic world - in which the writer works?...
> Second (and finally), this book discusses the way literary reputations 
> grow
> - and how, today, they don't grow.
>
> He goes on to prove his point in the intro, mixing a nuts-and-bolts
> discussion of scene-setting with a long passage on the nature of
> begeisterung (roughly translated as "inspiration," but it's actually one 
> of
> those German words that needs a 500-word explanation in English.)
>
> There are some good nuts-and-bolts essays - in particular, the essays on
> "Thickening The Plot" and "Characters" are pretty helpful. Even here,
> though, Delany throws some curveballs, albeit welcome ones. Take the essay
> on plot, for example. Delany goes off on some tangents, and also seems to 
> be
> discussing scene-setting instead of plotting. But it all comes together,
> when he explains that the key to a good plot is actually visualizing the
> events of the story as if they really happened. And if you're forced - by 
> a
> cranky critique group, or your own conscience - to change the story's 
> events
> around, then you must revisualize the story all over again. See it in your
> mind, through the lens of key details, until you can convince yourself 
> that
> "on some level the story actually did happen (as opposed to 'should have
> happened') in the new way." It's actually pretty amazing advice.
>
> A lot of the other nuts-and-bolts advice winds up in the back of the book,
> in an appendix called "Nips, Nits, Tucks And Tips." Including info like 
> when
> to use the first person, how to punctuate dialogue, and the dramatic
> structure of fiction.
>
> The rest of the book includes speeches, essays and letters, where Delany
> tells funny anecdotes and reminisces about his early friendships with
> storytellers and his encounters with other science fiction writers. (I
> didn't actually know he taught Vonda McIntyre at Clarion, but apparently 
> he
> did.) He explains why Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is a bad book,
> discusses how to achieve literary acclaim (including a discussion of Doris
> Lessing's refusal to cooperate with a would-be biographer) and a lengthy
> discussion of the state of writing and editing today.
>
> The book is full of insights and startling arguments, but it's probably 
> not
> a book you'll read in one go. I've found myself picking it up, reading one
> essay, and putting it down again for a day or two. It might actually be 
> that
> rarest of creatures - academic bathroom reading. This isn't, by any means, 
> a
> criticism. It's a very dense, ruminative book full of ideas that will pop
> into your head a few days after you read them. But it also feels a bit, at
> times, like Delany is sitting in an overstuffed armchair lecturing the
> reader, which goes over better in smaller doses. Luckily, the book comes
> packaged with the dosages already divided up.
>
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