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    About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews
    Unavailable
    About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews
    Unavailable
    About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews
    Ebook563 pages9 hours

    About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews

    By Samuel R. Delany

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Award-winning novelist Samuel R. Delany has written a book for creative writers to place alongside E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Lajos Egri's Art of Dramatic Writing. Taking up specifics (When do flashbacks work, and when should you avoid them? How do you make characters both vivid and sympathetic?) and generalities (How are novels structured? How do writers establish serious literary reputations today?), Delany also examines the condition of the contemporary creative writer and how it differs from that of the writer in the years of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the high Modernists. Like a private writing tutorial, About Writing treats each topic with clarity and insight. Here is an indispensable companion for serious writers everywhere.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWesleyan University Press
    Release dateApr 16, 2013
    ISBN9780819574244
    Unavailable
    About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews
    Author

    Samuel R. Delany

    Samuel R. Delany published his first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, at the age of twenty. Throughout his storied career, he has received four Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards, and in 2008 his novel Dark Reflections won the Stonewall Book Award. He was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002, named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2014, and in 2016 was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. Delany’s works also extend into memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society. After many years as a professor of English and creative writing and director of the graduate creative writing program at Temple University, he retired from teaching in 2015. He lives in Philadelphia with his partner, Dennis Rickett.  

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    Reviews for About Writing

    3.5/5

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    • 2/5
      Junot Diaz recommended in an interview. It's a strange and obnoxious book about the craft of writing. What you need to know is that Delany is very smart His intelligence however is right out of Bronx Scientific. He is extremely well read and he doesn't have a whole lot of patience for mediocre writing or people who aren't prepared to work very hard as writers. The whole book is suffused with a kind of asbergers brittle impatience and - its not arrogance - but elitism. He has some astonishingly smart things to say about writing but unfortunately these are buried in the text and are never elaborated on in any meaningful fashion. He has for instance this extraordinary insight into characterization (page 77-79) and on flashbacks page 42 but he doesn't seem to have the patience to unpack what he means. He is in fact to the extent to which communication is part of the job, a bad writer. His description of the difference between structure and plot was so bewildering that I still never understood what he meant. All this is very odd because he teaches this stuff. You feel that Sam is one of those guys with tremendous insight who can't be bothered coming down to our level to explain what he means. The appendix seems to be the place where he talks cogently about some of the boilerplate concerns but that is 390 pages in. Now in fairness some of these are lectures, that is they have been re-purposed and whoever thought that was sufficient was mistaken. Ditto the letters and ditto the interviews. It might have been helpful to have had this project over seen by a stronger editor who would force Delany to focus on clarifying his ideas at greater length. Too bad. The other aspect of writing which Delany never touches - and I'm glad of that - is the role of emotions in helping one chose how to tell a story. Whether he misunderstands the role or doesn't feel it warrants his attention but given the personality here - and there is a lot of attitude - that's not a bad thing.
    • 5/5
      Samuel R. Delany has crafted an intelligent, rigorous collection of essays, interviews, letters and advice about writing and literature. At times, especially in the interviews the discussion veers into some offbeat territory and Delany is so well read and articulate he can be a bit hard to follow at times, despite striving for clarity. He's aware of his own pretensions too, which is helpful. The beginning "An Introduction: Emblems of Talent" is worth reading or buying the book alone, especially his succinct discussion about the difference between good writing and talented writing. Delany also has little mercy for the majority of contemporary writers of fiction and you may find yourself (as I did) wondering if you can or should write anymore. Getting a smack-down like this is helpful, it's honest, and also makes me want to get back to drafting because I've got a lot more understanding about the process than before regardless of how wilted I am on the inside.