Five books on the craft of writing

Recommending craft books is like recommending cookbooks. I can tell you what cookbooks I like, but my recommendations won't help unless I know what you're cooking. Do you like Mexican food? What about one-pan recipes? If so, I got a couple books you might like. If not, sorry. I know which ones I like, but they're only useful to you if you're cooking what I'm cooking.

Most writers I've met function how Cortázar says he functions in the prologue to the Spanish Edition of his Literature Class, Berkley 1980: "I am not systematic, I am neither a critic nor a theorist. Rather, as the work’s problems are presented to me, I look for solutions (Cortázar, Berkley 1980 Spanish Edition, p.4, self-translation)." Craft is typically not front-of-mind in the drafting process. For most writers, it benefits us to turn off our critical brain as we draft. Craft it is offered as a solution at the time of editing.

That said, I've been teaching Creative Writing for some years now. I have short stories published, and some of them have won awards I'm very proud of. I have an agent. I have a novel, a short story collection, and a poetry collection on the way. I finished my first MFA in Fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and now I pursue an MFA in Poetry from the UI Department of Spanish and Portuguese. I’ve made a career from pursuing Creative Writing degrees while I wait for my own writing career to get off the ground. My career is not enviable, and I wouldn’t recommend you emulate it unless you want to study Creative Writing in both Spanish and English. Being a career student is grading. However, between my TAships, publications, and the occasional class at Lighthouse, I’m able to put bread on the table. Even better, I get to do what I love: read and write literature.

While there are many more capable writers who can give you real writing advice, I think I’m uniquely positioned to direct you to those writers. As I wait for my own career as a writer to take off, I’ve made a career from being a student of the art of writing. So, that’s what it is. Me, a writer near the start of my career, directing you to other writers who will help you more than I can.

I love a good craft book. I love it when a writer who is further along than I am tells me, "Look here, Sonny, here's how you write." Having worked with other writers, I've seen the way craft has influenced all of us, even some living legends in the field. Teaching undergraduates at Iowa and working professionals at Lighthouse, I've also found some of my students moved by the craft essays we've discussed in class.

So, it's with that spirit that I approach recommending craft books. I don't know what you're cooking, but I know people often like my cooking. I know that I've tasted some great dishes from people who all read a few of the same cookbooks. I know that when I've taught others to cook, they've been grateful to learn some recipes and techniques I learned from this or that book. So, no matter what you're cooking, I'm sure you'll find something on this list you'll like.

Wonderlands by Charles Baxter

This collection of craft essays by Charles Baxter, often written as a personal narrative, has been a big influence on my nonfiction as well as my fiction. His essays on the craft of fiction are such great nonfiction that it's hard not to learn the craft of nonfiction by following his example. Lan Samantha Chang was the first person to recommend this book to me. She continually brought it up in our workshop, relating some of the craft ideas Charles Baxter discussed to the pieces our writers submitted for workshop. When I asked her why she liked this book so much she said, "It's very sincere." The writer isn't trying to lay out craft dogma, he's just following curiosities.

When I finally read it, I loved it. I loved it so much I've taught an essay from it, "Captain Happen," for the past two semesters, and I intend to continue teaching it. For my students' final project, I have them turn in one short-story and one essay reflecting on how learning about craft changed (or didn't change) their writing. One student, who wrote the best student story I've had the pleasure of reading, wrote an essay about how "Captain Happen" had "saved [her] from writing a bad story." Another student wrote, "I didn't want Charles Baxter to be right, but when I wrote a boring story and fixed it with 'Captain Happen', it worked."

Charles Baxter is a humble writer. He has no claim to being right, and never says, “This is just how things work.” He’s a writer who loves what he does and tries to say things that may be helpful to others.

On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner

I have to address the elephant in the room: The Art of Fiction by John Gardner. This seems to be the first craft book everyone hears about when beginning their studies. I am sorry to say, even as a proud Latin American writer who rebels against US American short-story conventions, I am solidly in the tradition of John Gardner. That said, I've seen many writers be led astray by The Art of Fiction, and I've personally found the book On Becoming a Novelist to be a better book for the learning of fiction.

One of my mentors at the IWW once told me that The Art of Fiction was, "The most useless book about writing ever written." Although it’s a book which deeply influenced me, I see why he said it.

When I was 23, I had just graduated from Thomas Aquinas College and was looking to learn how to write a story. I had written some in the past, but I didn’t see any success in publication or MFA acceptances. I reached out to a Catholic author and asked him to read one of my short stories. He responded charitably, and with feedback. As far as criticism, he said, "You have to create the fictional dream. I want to know what temperature it is, how the wind feels. Describe the world to me." Intuitively, I felt this criticism was ill conceived, or at least not helpful for what I was cooking.

I ran his feedback by my mentor at Lighthouse Writers' Workshop, Benjamin Whitmer. He said, "Man, ignore that. When I was a young writer, I thought I had to describe everything. I became a whole lot better when I started only describing what was relevant to the story." He added, “Your story is about a boy who misses his dad. He’s not gonna think about the weather.”

I think the Catholic novelist believed that “fictional dream” means rendering every aspect of the material world. If you only read The Art of Fiction (and ignore how annoying endless details are to write and boring they are to read) I see why you might believe that. In On Becoming a Novelist Gardner elaborates that creating the fictional dream consists of answering all questions a reader could reasonably have. If the protagonist is concerned with the disappearance of his father, the only reader who would ask about the weather is one who wants to distract from your story.

On Becoming a Novelist often provides better explanations of the use of craft tools than The Art of Fiction does. That's my first reason for recommending it. The instructions are clearer, and inasmuch as they're clearer, they're better at helping you cook. But clarity aside, the real reason I recommend it is because of how much it personally moved me. When I read it, I felt that the writer of the book truly understood me in a way I'm rarely understood. As a writer, I was an unusual child and am an unusual adult. In On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner saw the unusual child in me, and he nurtured it. I once recommended it to a Catholic student of mine. I told him, “This isn’t the kind of book you study. It’s the kind of book you bring to the chapel with you to pray about your vocation as a writer.”

Mystery and Manners by Flannery O’Connor

I don’t want to say too much about this book. Odds are, if you’ve read any of my essays, or anything in Dappled Things, you’ve likely seen Mystery and Manners cited. It has touched all of us. All I can say is, while at Thomas Aquinas College, I started praying to God for a teacher to teach me how to write fiction. He sent me this book. I found it in the library and read it in one sitting. I came back the next day and read it again.

I’ll leave you, then, with a couple of quotes. At first it was going to be one, but she says so many important things in this book I feel like two is a good place to stop myself before I sit down and type out the whole book.

“The Catholic novelist doesn’t have to be a Saint; he doesn’t even have to be a Catholic. He does, unfortunately, have to be a novelist.”

- F.O. “Catholic Novelists and Their Readers”

“The fact is that the materials of fiction writers are the humblest. Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn’t write fiction. It’s not a grand enough job for you.”

- F.O. “The Nature and Aim of Fiction”

The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo

Poetry was my first love in literature. Specifically, it was Emily Dickens. I started reading poetry, obsessing over poetry, when I was ten. I memorized poetry, and I’m glad to say I’m now writing a poetry thesis for my second MFA. However, returning to poetry feels, to me, like returning to my hometown in Mexico. There’s a familiarity, but I don’t really know it. Richard Hugo might say that it’s my distance from the subject which allows me to write it.

“I know almost nothing of the substances about the places that trigger my poems. Knowing can be a limiting thing. If the population of the town is nineteen but the poem needs the sound seventeen, seventeen is easier to say if you don’t know the population.”

- R.H. The Triggering Town

The principal lesson from this book is that the poet has two subjects. The first is the triggering subject, i.e. the subject that inspires the writer to write, the second is the discovered subject, i.e. what the poem becomes/what it’s really about. To discuss this, he teaches his reader the musicality of words, the game of form, and the importance of not-knowing. I love a good book about not knowing. It might be the only book fiction writers and poets are any good at writing.

Literature Class, Berkley 1980 by Julio Cortázar

I’m happy an English translation of this book exists. To illustrate the sort of help this book has provided to my students, I’d like to share two anecdotes.

The first anecdote: a young man who was writing a book once approached me after mass. He told me that he was writing a book, and the priest said I could help. He said he was writing a book trying to reconcile physics, theology, and psychology. I said, “Sorry, I don’t think I’ll be of much help to you.” He asked me what kind of books I write, and I told him, “I’m working on my first novel. It’s magical realist.” Then, he asked what my magic system looks like. “That’s not really how magical realism works.”

“How does it work?”

I didn’t know how to explain it to him. I just told him, “I think, in Latin America, especially the older generation assume that magic is the sort of thing that happens and doesn’t need an explanation. I think in the USA and in England, magic exists in a system because people expect magic to work like chemistry or physics. In Latin America, it’s more like miracles.”

Later, I read Cortázar’s Literature Class. He explained it perfectly. In discussing one of his stories, he mentioned that in Latin America it was well received as it was in France and the USA, but that French and US American readers said, “I just don’t understand how it works.” He then explained that magic intruding on reality is essential to the story. If people did understand how it worked, then it wouldn’t be magic. Cortázar argues, there’s an English and French habit to rationalize things which we don’t care to rationalize in Latin America.

The second anecdote: I shared this chapter with my students at the University of Iowa because I knew that many of my students were writing fantasy. I thought it might benefit them to be exposed to magic as an intrusion into reality, not only as a system. One of my students came in the next week and told me, “I shared a ghost story with my other workshop last week, and everyone kept saying they didn’t understand how the ghost worked. I was reminded of this reading, and I thought, ‘These Anglos are rationalizing my fiction!’”

Poor kid. He encountered the beauty and creative utility of Latin American storytelling but did so from Iowa. I can’t imagine growing up in Iowa, thinking of your state as the corn state, then going to Mexico and seeing the diversity of corn and ways of preparing it we have in Mexico. You must feel let down, deceived. Is Iowa really the corn state? Then why is it that at any random market in Mexico you’ll easily find at least nine different kinds of corn but in the Hy-Vee, you’ll only find one or two? Why is it that in Mexico they put huitlacoche in tocos and quesadillas and gorditas but in Iowa they throw it out? If you ever go to Latin America, or pick up a Latin American book, or have any encounter with any culture other than your own, you might find a few delightful things which you’ve never encountered north of the Rio Grande.

The semester after I taught the student with the ghost story, I ran into him outside of the Spanish TA office (because that semester I was teaching Spanish). I asked him if he was there for a class. He said, “Yeah. Actually, I’m minoring in Latin American studies now. Your class inspired it.”

It’s good to be exposed to global literature and see the different ways in which writers approach the same problems. I often give the analogy of medicine or technology. I tell students, “Imagine if Apple and Windows only hired U.S. born employees, and no one from India or Sweden or China? Imagine if MIT only paid attention to innovations made in other American universities, and not to innovations made in Europe or Asia? Progress would be a lot slower.”

Likewise, with fiction, if you don’t pay attention to the innovations made in other countries and other languages, your pool of solutions to problems will be more limited. This is why I teach Literature Class, 1980 by Cortázar, and why throughout the semester we discuss writing from several different Latin American countries, as well as Nigerian and Japanese literature when relevant to student work. The goal isn’t internationality. The goal is good literature, and good literature happens everywhere. Someone in my class might find that one writer is doing something they haven’t encountered, something they probably won’t encounter in US American literature, but something that helps them make sense of their own writing.

Steering The Craft by Ursela K. Le Guin and Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell

I have a little collection of index cards my mother-in-law gave me that has a few quick recipes. I rarely go to these index cards when I want to make a whole dish, but I often go to them when I have a quick question that can be easily answered. “How long do I bake potatoes?”

Unlike the other books on this list, Steering the Craft and Refuse to be Done are books I wouldn’t teach, but they are books I use for reference. Although I’ve never assigned Steering the Craft, but I have been in situations when a student asks, “What’s the difference between a third-person active narrator and a third-person distant narrator?” I scan the pages where Ursela K. Le Guin explains just that, I print them out, and my student leaves my class with some technical distinction she didn’t have before.

Refuse To Be Done is still different. It’s more like a book on kitchen management than it is a cookbook. Instead of giving you instructions on cooking, it gives you advice for when you cook. “Remember to wear latex or vinyl gloves when you cut jalapeños. Don’t forget to wet the knife before you cut the onion, that way it won't make you cry. Wash as you go. Do not keep garlic, onion, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, in the fridge. Leave them in a dark, dry area.” None of it has anything immediate to do with cooking, but it’s all things you should know if you want to cook.

What Refuse to Be Done has to teach you about writing isn’t craft. It’s not how fiction works. Rather, it’s how writers work. How to write a novel in three drafts. And, honestly, this is the book I’ve found most useful at the time of writing my novel. I mean useful in a productive sense, not in a personal/spiritual sense.

The sad truth is, if you want to be a successful writer, you don’t have to be a very good one. In fact, you might find it more lucrative to be very bad. However, it doesn’t matter how bad or good you are, you’ll never see any success if you don’t write your book. That’s why I’ve started respecting bad writers. The more I’ve worked on my novel and seen how painfully difficult it is to write any novel, the more I respect all novelists—even the bad ones.

Writing a novel is hard but Refuse to be Done has made it easier. I wish I had found it sooner.

I hope you’ve found something helpful here. Typically, I teach these books in a fragmented way. We get a taste, one or two essays, but we don’t read the whole book. Every week, we read one craft reading (a chapter or essay from these books), one fiction reading (paired with the craft reading), and I give my students one exercise in the vain of, “Write a scene with two characters where they each desire something different but neither of them can say what it is they want.” These craft readings aren’t meant to be taken on their own. They’re meant to help young writers develop the habit of reading as writers so they can develop their own writing practice.

I’ve excluded other texts that have been important to me, books like This Craft of Verse by Borges, Formas Breves by Piglia (which hasn’t been translated to English yet, but when my schedule clears up, I’ll translate it myself if nobody has), A Swim In The Pond In The Rain by Saunders, and Novelist As A Vocation by Murakami. I’ve sacrificed some books I love to share with you a curriculum, a set of readings that would be helpful to study over the course of a semester.

Sitting down and reading cookbooks won’t make you a great chef, and reading craft books won’t make you a great writer. But, if your mom didn’t teach you, a book might be all you have. These are books that taught me fiction, mostly, in absence of a teacher. I’ve had the pleasure of sharing these texts with my students and seen how it’s helped them. I hope now they will be of use to you, no matter what you’re cooking.