Book Recommendation: China Mountain Zhang

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the writing process as I’m going through this edit – how all the pieces fall together to create a cohesive whole greater than the sum of its parts. In that vein, I have a book recommendation for you: China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh.

The book is sci-fi, the story beautiful and worth the read for that alone, but this particular book recommendation is for the glimpse into the writing process.

In the world McHugh created, there is a thing called organic architecture. I read the description of how it works how all the pieces happen to come together to create perfect, ingenious systems and relationships – so many details the architect can’t possibly hold in his conscious mind all at once. Then I had to go back and read it again. And again.

A writer-friend asked me once how I planned out stories and made these disparate parts intertwine and feed together. I pointed her at this book. Because I can’t explain how it works.

Details will appear in rough drafts for no particular reason, only to find out it was necessary foreshadowing or a building block to a major part of the story later on. (Remember: I’m not a planner.) As I’ve grown as a writer, I’ve come to recognize those helpful sorts of details earlier.

Editing, there are things I have to change to cover plot holes and fix lazy writing. I consider and play with my options. The possibilities that just don’t feel right are dismissed fairly quickly. The ones that do feel right, when they click into place, has a cascade effect on the rest of the book. Suddenly, older story decisions make more sense and newer story decisions have a better, more solid foundation.

For me, writing is an organic process, but I didn’t really understand that until I read this book over a decade ago.

The organic architecture is a detail in the book. Rereading it, I’m always surprised at how little time is devoted to it because of the huge impression it made on me, but reading it the first time felt a bit like coming home.

It’s an excellent book, so go read it. Thank me later.

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