Gareth Powell’s About Writing leaps into the recommended list for anyone thinking about writing a book, or if more experienced, wanting to check their own thinking about doing so. While obviously written by someone who specialises in SFF/horror, it is definitely broad enough to be widely useful, and includes notes on other genres.
The book has the warm, passionate, and pragmatic approach that Powell embodies in his online persona. It mixes short pithy challenges with longer, well argued chapters.
If I was looking for a credible book on how to write novels, I’d expect the following.
The person who wrote it has actually written several successful novels (or shepherded many books to success as editor or agent.)
They have had enough experience of self-publishing and traditional publishing to talk sense about both, and hybrid forms too.
In setting out how they write, they explain why, and they don’t assert that is the only way to do it. (Since, empirically, many highly successful authors write in very different ways).
It should touch on all the challenges of starting and finishing that first book, and also, what comes after.
About Writing does all this and more, and it is hard to fault.
Powell talks about the different bits of being an author. How ideas come, how creativity can be nurtured, how to unlock yourself when stuck. And also the discipline and hard work needed to finish the draft and go on to make the book as good as it can be. Writers must soar to the stars with empathy and imagination then have the hard intellectual work figuring out how to restructure or reframe the vision to make better sense or take fewer words.
A book about writing needs to look at the whole picture. Powell is realistic but not defeatist about the financial challenges of writing and he talks about the business side. There is the vexed issue of promotion and having a public side.
Powell is sound on the personal. Writing books is a mental marathon and you need to look after yourself – the need to stay well read, to look after body and mind, to keep up connectivity offline with your friends and family. But also he’s right that’s there is joy, community and friendship to be found in the writing world.
Finally, Powell gives us a manifesto, a case for creativity and writing stories as a great social good – a case for trying to be optimistic as a means to create a better future – and I love his parable that the Ugly Ducklings just need to get together and be who they are. Swans, nah.
I wish I had had this book when I started.
