Writing About Writing About Writing 32

Part 32 of an intermittent series where I read or re-read the writing books on my shelf to see if they’re worth keeping. See previous part here and Index of all books here.

Milford Science Fiction Writers have also been serialising this set of blog-posts, they’re good people, you should check them out. It did, for a second, make me think I could turn this blog series into something, a book maybe. I pitched it to a publisher. They were underwhelmed, ‘Sounds like a good idea for a blog,’ they said.

The last one of these was in November, it both seems like a long time ago and metaphorically yesterday. I’m still struggling. Anway, enough about that – Let’s talk books:

First up are a pair of books with the same premise but different execution. Creators often talk, in print, about their creative processes, so why not collect short pieces together into an anthology? Good idea. The first is edited by Brewster Ghiselin and they’ve chosen an eclectic range of contributors including scientists (including Einstein), mathematicians, musicians, painters etc, but I found this really quite dry. The better option, for my money, was edited by Barron, Montuori & Barron – which isn’t quite as eclectic but the pieces are better written and more engaging. Even the covers are similar (and, typically dull).

The next few books follow on from Cybertext (I covered in WAWAW 31)

Hamlet on the Holodeck by Janet Murray has a new edition, and it’s a shame I didn’t know this as the version I read was seriously outdated. It’s an academic book – and reads like one. But does have some interesting things to say about electronic literature. Which, not at all coincidentally, was the next book.

If you don’t know anything about electonic literature, or even what it is and want to educate yourself with essays on the subject you can read this. However I found it a little dull as a read. But as a skim it’s a great overview – but, again, dated – but then that’s the joy of picking these books up at charity shops, right?

The last in this mini-series (for now) is Story Machines.

This was a much better read than the other two – and up to date (well, almost – it’s a fast-moving field and this was published in 2022, but at least has some thoughts on ‘a’ version of Chat-GPT). It’s engagingly-written and another useful overview and if you had to choose one of these three books is the one I’d steer you to.

Does reading any of those three books make you a better writer? Maybe not – but I think Story Machines with an examination of different models of storytelling strategies – in the way that computer folk have retro-engineered authors’ processes – is probably the most applicable too.

And the final book for this post is Tone

Unlike most writing books this has a great cover – really striking and outstanding. But I didn’t get on with the way this was written, and my attention wandered, and I’ve put it down on the discard pile.

(from the Amazon blurb)

Tone is a collaborative study of literary tone, a notoriously challenging and slippery topic for criticism. Both granular and global, infusing a text with feeling, tone is so difficult to pin down that responses to it often take the vague form of “I know it when I see it.”

It was the collaborative voice (the ‘Committee to Investigate Atmosphere’ ) that I didn’t get on with, it seemed forced and gimmicky. There wasn’t much in the way of insight either that I could see for the bit of the book I read.

I note that in WAWAW 31 I said: “Talking of Writers Block I have finally written and submitted something new last month, as well as polished and submitted something I wrote a couple of years ago.” – One of those is still under consideration and the other was published (see Publishing news). I am currently writing this blog post as procrastination from adding to a story in progress that is being waited for from the editor of an anthology. i.e. I hope to have a third submission out shortly…

Drop a comment with your favourite writing book or tip here or email me via the Contact page. If you’re a publisher or Indie Author and would like me to review your writing book drop me a line!