Writing Great Fiction by James Hynes

Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques by James Hynes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Entertaining and somewhat informative lecture series on writing. There was a lot in here in though that we all learned in high school English class like the general structure of a novel.

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Ongoingness by Sarah Manguso

Ongoingness: The End of a Diary by Sarah Manguso
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked this book a lot. It's only a little bit about the author keeping a diary, it's actually about time, and life, death, and motherhood. It conjured up my horror at our our ceaseless march towards not just death but oblivion. I'm a complicated type of Christian that doesn't think the universe owes me eternity, but rather that I owe the universe a lot of sacrifice to others. So to me, as to many others, the oblivion is a real thing that makes it hard to justify the little daily acts, and losing memories- mental or physical- is very much a step towards that oblivion.

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A Delicate Aggression by David O. Dowling

A Delicate Aggression: Savagery and Survival in the Iowa Writers' Workshop by David O. Dowling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My interest waxed and waned while reading this. As other reviewers mentioned it was more of a collection of biographies about certain teachers and certain students at the Iowa Writers Workshop MFA in three different eras. I was originally hoping to learn more about the actual program, especially the modern era because my husband attended for fiction writing in the early 2000s, but it didn’t provide that. Nonetheless, I found the information about Paul Engle, Flannery O’Connor, and Marilynne Robinson very interesting. Engle created and managed to fund an amazing program and the author is confusingly kind of negative towards him. But overall, I’m glad I read this.

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The Creative Curve by Allen Gannett

The Creative Curve: How to Develop the Right Idea at the Right Time by Allen Gannett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was pretty solid, there was even some new information here which is pretty exciting for me since I read a lot of books on these general psychology-behavioral economics-business topics.

My main complaint is that we can't completely control the four laws of creativity. The current cultural zeitgeist, for example, is completely out of our control; if that culture has no interest in us or vice versa, then that's that. Likewise, not all people have access to high-quality creative communities either because of geography, lack of wealth, or family responsibilities.

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Mao II by Don DeLillo

Mao II by Don DeLillo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s really hard to write a book that is both literary and has a good plot. This is literary only. It’s about human groups, God, politics, and terror, and how these things relate. It’s also about writing, writers, and the importance of art.

But in my opinion, the actual plot is awful. I don’t care about any of the characters except maybe Karen but I want to read a whole book about Karen’s adventures (as a Moonie and beyond) and thoughts. I didn’t care for Karen’s self-objectification though. And then the characters have sort of random unrelated actions that don’t unify into a narrative.

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The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Short, with some good things regarding how to be brave enough to be creative. It also had a big dose of magical thinking and zero research.

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Artful by Ali Smith

Artful by Ali Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Maybe not the best place to start with Ali Smith. I liked the language a lot and she made her grief beautiful and absurd in a way that I loved. But the essays are strange and disjointed. I also didn't really like Oliver Twist so Smith's comments on the book throughout left me a bit cold.

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A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a brilliant essay about writing and feminism, and it made me feel like cheering on Woolf. That said, I struggled with the fictional elements inside of the nonfictional essay.

Favorite quotes:

“Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. That was what he was protecting rather hot-headedly and with too much emphasis, because it was a jewel to him of the rarest price.”

“They start the day confident, braced, believing themselves desired at Miss Smith's tea party; they say to themselves as they go into the room, I am the superior of half the people here, and it is thus that they speak with that self-confidence, that self-assurance, which have had such profound consequences in public life and lead to such curious notes in the margin of the private mind.”

“The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”

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My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A very short, beautiful, and somewhat sad book. It's about a protagonist Lucy, her family, and a few people that make an impression on her. It's about love-and-hurt. It's about poverty. War. Psychological trauma in the lower case.

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Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'd heard good things about this book and didn't recognize the author's name until she explained who she was. Then I was dubious about the book. The beginning wasn't very good or useful, but since it was a short book I pushed through anyway. My fear of missing out was rewarded again! The book got better and more interesting but most of all worth it for the story of the costume party which I gather is a true story the author heard from someone else.

All this would be enough for only 3 stars, except that despite how much I resisted the book and it's message, it is actually inspiring.

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Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Some interesting things. Not as interesting or as instructive as some other books on writing.

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How to Write Fiction Without the Fuss by Lucy McCarraher

How to Write Fiction Without the Fuss by Lucy McCarraher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book doesn’t really apply to literary fiction as much as genre fiction. McCarraher should have skipped specific and arbitrary grammar tips and instead suggested the writer learn basic grammar.

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One Perfect Word by Debbie Macomber

One Perfect Word: One Word Can Make All the Difference by Debbie Macomber
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is very religious, and clearly a lot of people find it inspirational. It's a pretty easy short read and I don't regret reading it.

However, I just read Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America and this is the exact kind of "magical thinking" she argues against.

I have a big problem with the line of thinking that goes, "pray and your prayer will be answered, unless it's not and then either 1) you didn't pray hard enough, or 2) God has a different plan we can't understand." But did you know that people have studied whether or not prayer works in medical situations?:

Analyzing complications in the 30 days after the operations, the researchers found no differences between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not.

In another of the study's findings, a significantly higher number of the patients who knew that they were being prayed for — 59 percent — suffered complications, compared with 51 percent of those who were uncertain. The authors left open the possibility that this was a chance finding. But they said that being aware of the strangers' prayers also may have caused some of the patients a kind of performance anxiety. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/hea...

So yeah, I can't get terribly excited about Macomber's message, though I don't reject it completely either. I think that focus, meditation, and determination can have big effects on a person's life, as can luck.

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