Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I clearly need to read more from Ursula K Le Guin.
I picked this book up based on the review a friend and colleague posted about it several months ago. As an instructor for PhD students and postdocs who seek to improve their writing skills, this seemed like an interesting read and possible source for new ideas and tips to share.
I’m delighted to say this book proved more than useful and highly insightful, and already appears to have influenced my own teaching as well as revising for various clients. (I’m not kidding: I caught myself yesterday hearing Ursula’s guidance as I proofread a manuscript for a client, finding several highly ambiguous and awkwardly phrased sentences that desperately required reshuffling.)
Filled with insight, tips, and useful examples from masters of prose, as well as exercises for both writing and critiquing, this is a highly useful book, both for those writing fiction or memoirs as well as for those like my own students attempting to tell the story of their research. As time (and energy levels) permits, I plan to work through the exercises. At the very least, I’ll be incorporating them into my own courses and gladly share them with colleagues.
This is a gem of a resources for those who seek to write as well as for those working with writers regardless of genre, style, length or topic. It’s also a bloody good read.
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Tag Archives: Writing
On ‘Write It Up’, by Paul Silvia
Write It Up! Practical Strategies for Writing and Publishing Journal Articles by Paul J. Silvia
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
As an instructor to young (and older) PhD students, specifically providing guidance on the wonderfully wacky world of academic publishing, I think this book rocks.
It’s not just a how-to for each individual section of a manuscript, it’s also a bit like a personalised cheerleader, cutting off each objection and ‘but what about’ as it crops up. Never dull, always insightful and on point, Paul Silvia offers a delightful primer on academic writing and putting together academic articles that will be read rather than simple consigned to the published rubbish heaps that litter various libraries, virtually and otherwise.
I’d require my students to read this book if they were undergraduates and took my classes for actual letter grades. However, they’re adults and can and will do what they want with their valuable time. So, let’s just say that I will strongly encourage them to heed his advice (along with mine to read this book), particularly if they question what we discuss and do in my own classrooms.
One particularly useful bit of this book is the chapter on the publication process itself, from submission to journals through to revising and resubmitting based on that most dreaded process called ‘peer review’. If you, my dear students, read nothing else, read that chapter. [And, as you do, you will hear my voice, saying, ‘See? I told you so!’]
Thank you, Professor Silvia, for having our instructors’ backs, as well as providing an example of an academic writer with wit, charm and intellect that shines through careful writing. I’ll be recommending this gem of a book to all of my students forevermore.
On ‘How to Write a Lot’
How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing by Paul J. Silvia
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A colleague / friend with whom I’ve been working the last year recently mentioned this little gem of a book to me as we discussed some rather disappointing peer reviews she’d received.
Academic writing is hard work, often leaving writers / authors rather dispirited and unmotivated. Finding motivation to write at all remains a constant battle for many of us. And, time and again, I find myself saying to students, colleagues and myself, ‘just schedule time to write and only write if you want to accomplish anything’.
More than anything, that message rings out loud and clear throughout this precious little bit of encouragement by Paul Silvia.
I genuinely love this book. Its tone. Its thinness. Its simplicity. Its language. And, its messages, both primary and supporting. Whether student or mentor, writing an article or book manuscript or proposal, whether just beginning or seeking to finish items on your to-do list, this book offers something for everyone.
In the week since it arrived, I’ve gone from planning to read a chapter at a time to plowing through it as if it is the most exciting suspense novel ever. It’s just that engaging. And, I will be recommending, if not demanding, that all of my students give it a read regardless of where they live within the graduate school landscape.
Thank you, Paul Silvia. I’ll be revisiting my own writing schedule this weekend. And, recommitting to cleaning my desk procrastinating less.
A dear John to coffee…
Dear Coffee:
I adore you.
Above all the beverages and vices I rely on, I have been most committed and faithful to you, scarcely missing our morning rendez-vous for going on 30 years now.
Why?
Why then have you forsaken me so?
In a single bump against you, you not only created the single largest cold coffee puddle across my desk, ruining countless to-do lists in an instant. But, you spread across and within every single crevice on and into my trusty keyboard, rendering her useless. I know you have occasionally suffered from neglect at the expense of my keyboard, at times growing cold. But, I’ve always returned to you, my darling dearest Coffee.
As I make an emergency trip to find a replacement keyboard, I’m thinking hard about our relationship. I wonder: Is it time to take a break from one another?
Let’s sleep on it. But,… this hurts, Coffee.
PS … I suspect we both know, come morning, I’ll come crawling back to you, you magical potion. But, still….
Photo courtesy of my friend Puck.
On ‘They Say / I Say’
They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing by Gerald Graff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A colleague and friend of mine passed along this book’s citation, suggesting that it might be of interest to me for a new course I’m teaching on academic rhetoric and argumentation.
She could not have made a more apt book recommendation.
What a gem for those seeking to become better academic writers as well as for those guiding others to improve their writing skills and prose. Examining academic texts not simply as a report of findings but as a conversation amongst scholars helps to create clear and engaging texts, rather than prose that suffers from the inaccessibility label often lobbed at members of the academy and their manuscripts.
Indeed, I’m often asking my own students why academic texts shouldn’t engage readers, even those from fields and disciplines further removed from their own?
I’ll be recommending this to all of my students from now on. And, revisiting this book as I work to improve my own writing as well my classes.
Read to write
Style guides of various sorts from my own library.
In my Academic Writing class, my students often ask what they can/should do to improve their writing aside from learning grammar and stylistic conventions in English. Aside from referring them to the various style guides around, my answer never waivers: ‘Read. Read as much as you can from writers who write well and writers you admire and enjoy.’ The clever sods typically follow-up my response with a question that inevitably stumps me: ‘Who should we read? What books do you recommend?’
So many amazing writers , both contemporary and historical, provide excellent examples of clear, clean and crisp writing it’s a challenge to come up with a list of any kind. Given that so many others have created their own lists of ‘must-reads’, it feels weird providing my own answer this question let alone that anyone is genuinely interested in my response. But, as their guide in all matters related to Academic Writing, I have thought about this quite a lot since returning to the classroom. At the very least, here’s hoping I’ve added to their holiday reading list and possibly provided them with a few gems previously unknown to them.
Given how often I get this question, I decided to put together a list (and link) that I can refer them to.
So, who should my students read?
Typically, when I’m asked I immediately respond with John Irving. To me, anything written by John Irving is a) brilliant; b) weird and slightly surreal; and, most importantly, c) exceptionally well-written. I tell my students to read anything he’s written (because I love him), although my favourites consist of The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve read each of these books over the years. I love them each time. His characters are always tragically and bizarrely flawed. But, it’s the writing that astounds me anew every time. Mr Irving’s use of language and style combined keep me reading him, even when the stories fell well short of my hopes. In short, I love his writing—stories and characters aside.
In terms of other writers who provide excellent examples of style and language, here’s my full list (I supplement my own list with recommendations from friends gathered in Facebooklandiastan below). This inventory is in no particular order.
- John Irving: A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Cider House Rules, but anything really.
- A S Byatt: Possession.
- Haruki Murakami: Anything goes. Despite being translated into English, because Mr Murakami knows English so well, I suspect he plays a significant role in the translations of his books and short stories into English. He’s a masterful story-teller, and has a brilliant translator.
- Alice Walker: The Temple of My Familiar.
- Vikram Seth: An Equal Music is perhaps one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read. This book moves me to tears, quickly advancing to uncontrollable sobbing during several passages. Absolutely incredible writing and an exceptionally example of carefully placed phrases, words and punctuation.
- Ernest Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man & The Sea are my favourites. But, just about anything Papa ever wrote is worthy of reading and demonstrates simple eloquence in all its brilliance.
- Maya Angelo: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
- Norman Rush: Mating — another incredibly beautifully crafted piece of writing which earned Mr Rush the National Book Award.
- Ian McEwan: Atonement.
- David Sedaris: Just about anything ever written as well.
- Edward Abbey: Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang.
- Toni Morrison: Beloved.
- Alice Munro: Just about anything she wrote.
- Paul Farmer: As my discipline-specific idol, I love his entire body of works. But, he’s also an exceptional writer, academic or otherwise. AIDS and Accusation was one of the most important works of his which still resonates with me roughly 20 years after I first read it.
Now, the recommendations from others. Friends from all walks of life provided the following list. I’ve placed an * next to those I fully agree with and neglected to include in my list. If you have additional writers or titles that you think belong here, please share them!
- Charles Dickens for his beautiful eloquence. (Interestingly, John Irving loves Dickens; Dickens is not a favourite of mine).
- Kurt Vonnegut*: I haven’t read any Vonnegut since high school, but I love him still.
- Stephen King: Despite borrowing from his own book on writing for my class, specifically his insistence on the active voice, I don’t find his writing that compelling. But, it is incredibly sound technically, and, undoubtedly the man has a wicked imagination.
- Ursula la Guin
- Richard Dawkins* ‘makes science easy to read without trivialising it’, commented one friend. I fully agree. I haven’t read much of him since I left graduate school. He’s incredibly eloquent as a speaker and writer both, and bloody brilliant.
- Vladimir Nabokov
- Anne Rice for her prose. Again, not one of my favourite writers, but that’s mostly because I’m admittedly a snob.
- Primo Levi, an Auschwitz survivor and chemist. I’ve not read anything by him, but will do.
- Flannery O’Connor
- George Orwell*
- David Lodge: Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work.
- Julian Barnes* — I can’t remember which book it was that I read first. But, I love Julian Barnes. Amazing writing.
- Jane Austen: just about everything.
- PG Wodehouse
- Neil Gaiman
- Isaac Asimov
- TC Boyle*: I’ve read both Drop City and A Friend of the Earth and loved both.
- P J O’Rourke
- Barbara Trapido
- Christopher Hitchens*
- Mark Twain: Rather embarrassing that I neglected to include him in my list, given that I adore him and grew up not far from Hannibal, Missouri.
- Henry Miller
- James Joyce: Dubliners
- Christopher Brookmyre
- Arundati Roy*
- Salman Rushdie*
- Marmon Silko
- Michael Chabon
- Margaret Atwood*
- Donna Tartt: The Secret History seems to be a favourite amongst others.
- Hunter S Thompson*
- Douglas Adams*
- Terry Pratchett: According to one friend, you should start with Guards! Guards! and move onward through his catalogue.
- Spider Robinson
- David McCullough
- Gina Berriault
- Joy Williams
- Richard Yates
- John Cheever
- Virginia Woolf*: A Room of One’s Own
- Oscar Wilde
- Bertrand Russell*
- Harold Pinter
- J M Barrie
- Alan Bennett
- Jean Paul Sartre
- Albert Camus
- Conan Doyle
- Russell Brand
- Truman Capote*: In Cold Blood. What an absolutely amazing piece of writing.
- Richard Feynman: QED and Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman were both recommended.
- Gloria Naylor
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- James Lee Burke
- Marilynn Robinson
- Sherman Alexie
- Nicholas Kristof
- David Brooks
A Tropical Fish Out of Water 