Writing books about writing books?
I know I’ve mentioned before that How-To books are the most published, easiest to write and most purchased rivaling even the great (if perhaps not eloquent) Dan Brown. Who would have thought The Idiot’s Guide Changing Your Oil would rival a pseudo-sordid tale of idolatry and a Springer-esque Who’s Your Daddy genetic test?
Any writer amateur, professional, student or hobbyist has at least one, somewhere on their shelf. A book about how to be a writer, write better, or get published. Hell, I’ve got dozens of them. They all tend to inflict a certain discontent in the reader by asking the powerful question again and again: Why aren’t you a published novelist? Anyone can do it. I can. You can.
Ouch. If anyone can write, why did I have to sit through two hours of that stroke-fest film The DaVinci Code? If anyone can do it, why is there no motivational plausibility within the characters of Star Wars Episode III? If anyone can do it, why my friends, aren’t we all writers?
No, I suggest it takes a special defect or mutation in the mind of what would turn out to be a “normal” artist to create a writer. There is something isolationist and obsessive about a writer. It’s something egotistical yet self-debasing, sly yet overt, slippery and mocking in the mind of a writer. Even a How-To writer.
The How-To Write authors are taking the same old facts we all learned in our creative writing, publishing or journalism 101 classes and compiling them in one place. Slap a catchy title on it (Write Right – seriously?) and voila, instant publishable book. Yes, I realize I’m unnecessarily trivializing the efforts of our How-To brethren. I guess I’m saying How-To (insert scheme here) books are low-hanging fruit.
I digress. My point, in my roundabout way is that it’s not as easy as the How-To crowd wants us to believe (that’s called marketing). I’ve since given up on How-To Write Better Books, I’d rather crack my shelves with some esoteric tome about Hannibal or a stack of yellowed pulp-sci-fi novels about a Jack Blastoff and his alien slut as they blast their way across the universe, gunning down in true old-west fashion green and blue men with feelers on their heads.
That said, I still keep my How-To write better books. Though numerous and often misleading, they occasionally hide real nuggets of wisdom within their pages.
Two that I would recommend are How to become a famous writer before you’re dead by Ariel Gore and The Portable MFA in Creative Writing by the New York Writers Workshop.
How to become a famous writer before you’re dead is broken down into digestible chunklets of data. A page or two a day, or some paragraphs while having morning coffee make the day’s writing roll a bit smoother. Ariel (I’ve never read any of her books, but her style comes through clearly in this piece) does a great job of making you feel special. She leaves that “anyone can do it” crap on some other sucker’s Amazon wishlist. She acknowledges that as a writer you’re a bit off, a spinning top without a center of gravity, leaving a trail of sizzling ink, spraying the with words, emptying your pockets of prose, a virtual dust-devil or dervish of diction. If you’ve gotta go the way of a How-To, this is one to pick up.
The Portable MFA in Creative Writing is no substitute for an advanced degree (come, on we all want letters behind our names) but it costs about $29,985 less. And it’s worth every penny. The advice is tight, highly distilled infusions of writerly insight, from page one to page done. It’s like the graduate classes without the lumpy stereo-types, and archetype, template stories (you know, my parents are dead and I never said good bye, how I stopped being a douche, my adolescent and clumsy attempt at erotica, my violent alter ego Axe-man jack). In art school, we used to say “the worst thing about art school is the other artists,” and this book alleviates all that. While it might not be as powerful as a professional writing instructor touring your frailties as an artist (just kidding), it’s got some great advice.
