“That’s me!” I thought to myself as I read the book title and congratulated myself on buying the book at my local Borders. I started questioning both my previous statement and my purchase when I struggled to get through the first half of the book, a section entitled “The Writer’s Nature.” Originally, I felt distanced from Gardner’s advice by what I took as pomposity (especially when he bashes science fiction); I eventually realized that this is Gardner’s honesty taking its own form. He repeatedly makes genuine appeals to the highest level of novelist in an extremely detailed fashion. These details are what make the continuous and vivid dream of a novel possible (“detail is the lifeblood of fiction”). Gardner provides numerous examples of how a poor choice of language can disrupt this dream from sentence structure to distasteful idioms. I was shocked to find that I had overlooked many of these applications in my own writing.
The second half of the book was more accessible, and I wonder if Gardner did this with conscious intent (many of his anecdotes follow a similar pattern of describing arduous but rewarding experiences.) We are taken on a brief but intricate journey through writer workshops, interactions with agents and editors, and possible bouts of writer’s block. I have faith that these later sections will be useful in my future endeavors, but there is an undertone of respect and generosity throughout the entire book that is immediately inspiring. I believe Gardner sums up these values when he warns the aspiring novelist to not “play pointlessly subtle games in which storytelling is confused with puzzle making.” Respect the reader enough to take them on as an equal partner. Be generous.
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