Write Your Way Real talk + resources for writers

"I don't have time to read — much less do the exercises in — every writing craft book out there."

Heard this refrain from many writers, and sang it more than a few times myself.

Look, you don't always need craft books and exercises, but they can help. Reading and doing a good writing craft book expands your toolbox, moves you toward more confident writing, and gives you ways to surmount certain struggles. The right craft book at the right time can revitalize your writing and rejuvenate your outlook on your project.

If only you can find the time and bandwidth.

Lucky for us, there's Ursula K. Le Guin's gem, Steering the Craft: A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story. It's a tiny book bursting with mighty teachings. Concise and direct in its instruction, generous with its examples, and deliberate with its exercises.

It covers the basics of good writing — grammar, word choice, the sentence, description, voice, and style. But Le Guin's best chapters illuminate and pull apart sticky subjects like Point of View (POV), narration, exposition, and even tense, with digestible, reproducible insights. Her lucid explanations and examples of different POV options, including what they allow and limit, their effect on the reader, and the problems they may create if used wrong, might be revelatory if you're struggling with the perspective from which you're telling your story.

I recommend this book so highly, that I've chosen it as April's book in both of the writers' book clubs I facilitate. Give it a try, let me know what you learn!

Here are a few more reasons I love it:

• Steering the Craft is short and suffers no foolishness. Le Guin does not languish or wax, she just tells the truth.
• It's useful whether the story you're writing is fiction or memoir. In fact, Le Guin goes out of her way to highlight when and how memoir must deviate from fiction, especially as POV is concerned.
• It offers solid advice for setting up and nurturing a good critique group (and even offers critique group guidance for how to use the book itself, throughout).

April Writers' Book Clubs

As I mentioned above, both my local in-person Asheville Writers' Book Club (AWBC) and the virtual Memoir Writers' Book Club (MWBC) are delving into Steering the Craft this month. Meeting dates are fast approaching, but it's not too late to get in (yet). Here are the details, including signup links:

AWBC: April 17th, 5:30pm, West Asheville Library meeting room. Sign up.

MWBC: April 21st, 7:00pm Eastern, Zoom. Save your spot.

Cornelia ✍🏼