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A Long Game: How to Write Fiction
A writing life, I’ve come to believe, is a years-long process of casting away everything you once believed for sure.
Elizabeth McCracken has been writing for most of her bestselling novels, critically acclaimed short story collections, and unstinting memoirs. For over three decades, she has also taught creative writing to generations of students. In A Long Game, she shares all she has learned along the way, deconstructing received wisdom about fiction whilst playfully tackling the mysteries that are inherent to writing and creativity.
Writing, she suggests, is about being in it for the long not just about polishing prose, but how paying attention to language, character, and plot widens one’s understanding of the world. Both an insight into the life of a working artist and an indispensable resource for writers, A Long Game is a future a delightful, intelligent account of what it means to write and live a creative life.
'How reassuring it is to have writers like Elizabeth McCracken among us' Yiyun Li
'Elizabeth McCracken is one of America's finest writers' Garth Greenwell
Elizabeth McCracken has been writing for most of her bestselling novels, critically acclaimed short story collections, and unstinting memoirs. For over three decades, she has also taught creative writing to generations of students. In A Long Game, she shares all she has learned along the way, deconstructing received wisdom about fiction whilst playfully tackling the mysteries that are inherent to writing and creativity.
Writing, she suggests, is about being in it for the long not just about polishing prose, but how paying attention to language, character, and plot widens one’s understanding of the world. Both an insight into the life of a working artist and an indispensable resource for writers, A Long Game is a future a delightful, intelligent account of what it means to write and live a creative life.
'How reassuring it is to have writers like Elizabeth McCracken among us' Yiyun Li
'Elizabeth McCracken is one of America's finest writers' Garth Greenwell
201 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 1, 2026
244 people are currently reading
9539 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth McCracken
50 books999 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Elizabeth McCracken (born 1966) is an American author. She is married to the novelist Edward Carey, with whom she has two children - August George Carey Harvey and Matilda Libby Mary Harvey. An earlier child died before birth, an experience which formed the basis for McCracken's memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination.
McCracken, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, graduated from Newton North High School in Newton, Massachusetts, and holds a degree in library science from Simmons College, a women's college in Boston. McCracken currently lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she is an artist-in-residence at Skidmore College. She is the sister of PC World magazine editor-in-chief Harry McCracken.
Elizabeth McCracken (born 1966) is an American author. She is married to the novelist Edward Carey, with whom she has two children - August George Carey Harvey and Matilda Libby Mary Harvey. An earlier child died before birth, an experience which formed the basis for McCracken's memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination.
McCracken, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, graduated from Newton North High School in Newton, Massachusetts, and holds a degree in library science from Simmons College, a women's college in Boston. McCracken currently lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she is an artist-in-residence at Skidmore College. She is the sister of PC World magazine editor-in-chief Harry McCracken.
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January 13, 2026Not sure why I read books like this. Because some day I want to work on a novel, I guess. You know. More than just a one-trick (poetry) pony. Plenty of poets have taken the plunge, after all.
As McCracken teaches (surprise!) writing at the Iowa Writer's Workshop and the U of Texas Austin, there are some insights from that angle. I guess I like best the format. Each "paragraph" is numbered and they total 280 (in 188 pp.). It made the book more inviting and easier to navigate.
Concrete advice on writing? It's here, though she doesn't lay it on with a trowel and if you're looking for a more specific playbook, you'd best look elsewhere. Quirky? I'd say, with plenty of opinion, humorous touches, admissions that all advice can equally be seen as b.s. (because everyone taking it is different, so of course results will vary).
Fun to read. Light. Didn't move me to start Chapter the First or anything, so not a charismatic wunderbuch. But still, when you read books like this, who cares?
As McCracken teaches (surprise!) writing at the Iowa Writer's Workshop and the U of Texas Austin, there are some insights from that angle. I guess I like best the format. Each "paragraph" is numbered and they total 280 (in 188 pp.). It made the book more inviting and easier to navigate.
Concrete advice on writing? It's here, though she doesn't lay it on with a trowel and if you're looking for a more specific playbook, you'd best look elsewhere. Quirky? I'd say, with plenty of opinion, humorous touches, admissions that all advice can equally be seen as b.s. (because everyone taking it is different, so of course results will vary).
Fun to read. Light. Didn't move me to start Chapter the First or anything, so not a charismatic wunderbuch. But still, when you read books like this, who cares?
January 20, 2026
In the hands of the right person, this will be a very liberating writing guide. ✍️
There are plenty of writing guide books on the market, but with A Long Game Elizabeth McCracken appears to have written the anti-writing guide book (in the best way), and even warns readers as such right from the start:
Across 280 brief insights on writing, McCracken essentially takes all the rules you've ever heard about writing and tosses them into the trash, and says that writing isn't about following rules, it's about finding what works best for you.
^ That is undoubtedly good advice.
Here are a few other morsels of insight that stood out to me while reading:
🚫 Don't follow all writing advice exactly, except for this one: Don't use a gothic font to make your work feel spooky.
🍷 It's more fun to be drunk on language (i.e., reach for your thesaurus; expand your vocabulary).
❤️ Write the book for your heart that only you can write.
👎 Screw all the writing rules. There will always be some author or book that breaks them magnificently, thereby rendering them false.
🐂 Be bullheaded about your work and romanticize the process so you keep writing.
🤪 Embrace your own strangeness. It's what makes your work original.
📝 Outlining works for some but not others. As will all things writing, you must find what works for you.
Did I agree with every point McCracken made? No. But it doesn't matter, because the point of this book is that what works for her may not work for me or for you. Read A Long Game to take from it what you want and leave the rest for others.
Is A Long Game purely a writing guide book? No. I'd argue that is has hints of memoir because McCracken also shares tidbits about her career as a writing professor and a published author.
Here are some bonus tips from the book:
✍️ If you wait until you feel confident enough to start your novel, you'll be waiting forever.
📚 You needn't limit yourself to writing what you know because with hard work and a willingness to learn you can make yourself know a great deal.
🏋️♀️ Writing is weightlifting. Lifting a small amount often will not train you to lift a bigger weight.
😐 Just because something is serious doesn't make it deep.
👉 If you find yourself struggling to write because you feel enslaved to The Rules, this is the book for you because A Long Game grants permission to break off the shackles and write freely.
Many thanks to Ecco books for sending me a requested copy of this book.
There are plenty of writing guide books on the market, but with A Long Game Elizabeth McCracken appears to have written the anti-writing guide book (in the best way), and even warns readers as such right from the start:
Any writer's ideal craft manual must be bespoke, like a suit, made to measure. Write a manifesto aimed only at your own work without worrying whether it applies to or offends anybody else in the world.
Across 280 brief insights on writing, McCracken essentially takes all the rules you've ever heard about writing and tosses them into the trash, and says that writing isn't about following rules, it's about finding what works best for you.
^ That is undoubtedly good advice.
Here are a few other morsels of insight that stood out to me while reading:
🚫 Don't follow all writing advice exactly, except for this one: Don't use a gothic font to make your work feel spooky.
🍷 It's more fun to be drunk on language (i.e., reach for your thesaurus; expand your vocabulary).
❤️ Write the book for your heart that only you can write.
👎 Screw all the writing rules. There will always be some author or book that breaks them magnificently, thereby rendering them false.
🐂 Be bullheaded about your work and romanticize the process so you keep writing.
🤪 Embrace your own strangeness. It's what makes your work original.
📝 Outlining works for some but not others. As will all things writing, you must find what works for you.
Did I agree with every point McCracken made? No. But it doesn't matter, because the point of this book is that what works for her may not work for me or for you. Read A Long Game to take from it what you want and leave the rest for others.
Is A Long Game purely a writing guide book? No. I'd argue that is has hints of memoir because McCracken also shares tidbits about her career as a writing professor and a published author.
Here are some bonus tips from the book:
✍️ If you wait until you feel confident enough to start your novel, you'll be waiting forever.
📚 You needn't limit yourself to writing what you know because with hard work and a willingness to learn you can make yourself know a great deal.
🏋️♀️ Writing is weightlifting. Lifting a small amount often will not train you to lift a bigger weight.
😐 Just because something is serious doesn't make it deep.
👉 If you find yourself struggling to write because you feel enslaved to The Rules, this is the book for you because A Long Game grants permission to break off the shackles and write freely.
Many thanks to Ecco books for sending me a requested copy of this book.
August 3, 2025
In A Long Game, Elizabeth McCracken doles out advice on writing without giving advice. "This is a book that dispenses advice...As with any such book...a lot of it is hogwash." What she goes on to explain in her vignettes is that what works for one writer doesn't necessarily work for another writer. Even so, she pushes on to explain the elements of writing such as POV and dialogue. This is what they are, this is what they do, but you ultimately choose how to go about it. I enjoyed her push for the author to get inside the character's body, not just in their head.
McCracken uses humor deftly and her personal experiences helped me connect to the writing. I will be starting this over to make sure I didn't miss anything. A delightful craft book.
I received this as an uncorrected proof through a Goodreads Giveaway.
McCracken uses humor deftly and her personal experiences helped me connect to the writing. I will be starting this over to make sure I didn't miss anything. A delightful craft book.
I received this as an uncorrected proof through a Goodreads Giveaway.
February 1, 2026
Re-read in its entirety inside of an airstream trailer in between bursts of pounding out a first draft, like coming up from the muck for air. The big takeaways for me this go around came towards the end and felt like direct responses to my particular hurdles this weekend.
The first:
"I love humor, as I love anything or anyone who has saved my life, and if I have a complaint about modern American letters, it's the occasional dismissal of books that are funny. Our puritan forbears: if you enjoy something, it can't be good."
And:
"Humor isn't shallow; it's not a glib coping mechanism. It comes from wells inside us as deep as grief and fury and love."
And, finally:
"If you revise trying to answer every objection anyone has to your work, you will write something unobjectionable. Nothing is worse than unobjectionable fiction."
The first:
"I love humor, as I love anything or anyone who has saved my life, and if I have a complaint about modern American letters, it's the occasional dismissal of books that are funny. Our puritan forbears: if you enjoy something, it can't be good."
And:
"Humor isn't shallow; it's not a glib coping mechanism. It comes from wells inside us as deep as grief and fury and love."
And, finally:
"If you revise trying to answer every objection anyone has to your work, you will write something unobjectionable. Nothing is worse than unobjectionable fiction."
February 26, 2026
DNF, this is not a book, it’s a collection of tweets
November 23, 2025
“To consider yourself a writer as you move about the world is—I am a true believer—a beautiful way to live, a form of open-mindedness, even in terrible times.”
This is not an instruction manual. It is made up on brief blurbs, some of them musings about the art of writing and others that go more into the craft itself. Author McCracken is a writing instructor, and she does talk a lot about her personal experience both as an author and a teacher. You’ll bet a little bit of everything, though none of it goes very deep.
I will say that McCracken covers various angles of the writing process and offers an occasional fresh insight. And if you are a writer, the book is filled with comforting bits of gold such as:
“We are not meant to know what we’re doing.”
I especially appreciated the section about how writing every single day does not work for everyone, and that’s okay. (Literally everyone tells you that you must do this in order to be a SERIOUS writer, so to hear someone actually have a realistic and understanding take was amazing.)
Here and there I found bits that didn’t really seem to hold a lot of meaning but seemed to be added because they sounded good. But this was a pleasant read overall, and I did highlight numerous parts of it.
“A Long Game” will not really tell you HOW to write a novel, but it will likely get you excited about sitting down to write.
Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
This is not an instruction manual. It is made up on brief blurbs, some of them musings about the art of writing and others that go more into the craft itself. Author McCracken is a writing instructor, and she does talk a lot about her personal experience both as an author and a teacher. You’ll bet a little bit of everything, though none of it goes very deep.
I will say that McCracken covers various angles of the writing process and offers an occasional fresh insight. And if you are a writer, the book is filled with comforting bits of gold such as:
“We are not meant to know what we’re doing.”
I especially appreciated the section about how writing every single day does not work for everyone, and that’s okay. (Literally everyone tells you that you must do this in order to be a SERIOUS writer, so to hear someone actually have a realistic and understanding take was amazing.)
Here and there I found bits that didn’t really seem to hold a lot of meaning but seemed to be added because they sounded good. But this was a pleasant read overall, and I did highlight numerous parts of it.
“A Long Game” will not really tell you HOW to write a novel, but it will likely get you excited about sitting down to write.
Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
October 13, 2025
On reading and writing: "What we love is inspiring, but what we hate is instructive."
It hardly feels appropriate to write a review on this craft book. Elizabeth McCracken shatters the rules of writing a novel, offering gold nuggets of insight and encouragement.
"I'm interested in modes of thinking, not rules."
I fell in love with the structure. There are 280 chapters, some of them one sentence only, of valuable and witty words of wisdom.
"Ambition in fiction is willingness to make mistakes."
Listening to her read her own work made me think of each chapter becoming a quote calendar where you tear off each day's wisdom.
"It's more important to choose an interesting event in fiction than a meaningful one. In fiction, you might as well run counter to your own human habits. You might as well be decisive if given to dithering."
This book is a gold mine of insight for someone like me who is just beginning her journey into playwriting. It was refreshing. I took so many notes that it may be illegal.
My favorite quote: "Some people love art that has no humor in it. I suspect they are the kind of people who drink meal replacement shakes and declare them 'better than you think'."
Thank you, NetGalley, Elizabeth McCracken, and Harper Audio for this audio ARC in exchange for my honest review.
It hardly feels appropriate to write a review on this craft book. Elizabeth McCracken shatters the rules of writing a novel, offering gold nuggets of insight and encouragement.
"I'm interested in modes of thinking, not rules."
I fell in love with the structure. There are 280 chapters, some of them one sentence only, of valuable and witty words of wisdom.
"Ambition in fiction is willingness to make mistakes."
Listening to her read her own work made me think of each chapter becoming a quote calendar where you tear off each day's wisdom.
"It's more important to choose an interesting event in fiction than a meaningful one. In fiction, you might as well run counter to your own human habits. You might as well be decisive if given to dithering."
This book is a gold mine of insight for someone like me who is just beginning her journey into playwriting. It was refreshing. I took so many notes that it may be illegal.
My favorite quote: "Some people love art that has no humor in it. I suspect they are the kind of people who drink meal replacement shakes and declare them 'better than you think'."
Thank you, NetGalley, Elizabeth McCracken, and Harper Audio for this audio ARC in exchange for my honest review.
October 9, 2025
Started slow for me. But then there were these dazzling insights that took my breath away. While aimed at writers and aspiring writers, the advice is applicable to a wide range of situations. Will be recommending to my writing group. Elizabeth McCracken's narration of her own words made me feel like I was sitting in the classroom of a favorite professor, not one of those big auditorium classrooms where the teacher lectures but a small conference room with old wooden tables and wide open windows. It reminded me of the best parts of writing workshops. Thank you to McCracken, HarperAudio Adult, and NetGalley for the audioARC.
January 1, 2026
251 - Hard not to think there’s a future in which your career will be different—when the things you’ve longed for are in your lap—and you can rest. No writer ever stops thinking this, not even the very successful ones. The lucky break. It’s why people buy lottery tickets.
Your writing life is right now, whatever that looks like. It is already underway. Don’t wait to write the work you’ve always wanted to. Don’t put things off, waiting for luck to change your life and career. Arrange your life now to be as conducive to writing as it can be.
How fitting that this was the book that took me into the new year, because a long game, as Elizabeth McCracken calls writing, is where I plan to devote my efforts in 2026.
This is one of the most fun books on craft that I’ve read. I loved McCracken’s tone, and her insight on the act of writing itself, the life you must build yourself in order to write, and the business of writing and publishing are excellent.
I have to admit I haven’t read any of her work prior to this, but I will definitely be remedying that as soon as possible, and I will definitely be carrying the words from this book with me through the year to come.
January 1, 2026
My new favourite book on craft. Loved everything about it.
December 8, 2025
“Sometimes I think I’d like to have an advice column, then I realize my answer to every single letter would be, ‘Buck up, for God’s sake.’ I don’t believe that bucking up is the answer to every problem, just that bucking up never hurt. Bucking up is not the same thing as sucking it up. Bucking up is not an endpoint: once you’ve done it, you can go on to other things.”
The only craft book I've ever read that provides a flawless argument for its existence.
That is to say: this should be the only you need.
The only craft book I've ever read that provides a flawless argument for its existence.
That is to say: this should be the only you need.
November 14, 2025
It's fascinating to step into the mind of a writer, especially a fiction write (I think), and I enjoyed McCracken's reflections, advice, and peeking into her process as a writer. The book is written in essays of varying length and I think that format did not work for me as well as a more cohesive non-fiction advice/narrative would have. I found it hard to remember the previous advice because we weren't building on an underlying theme. McCracken is a professor of creative writing and this book felt like a collection of chats that she might sit down to have with a student. I think this would make a great book to pick up, flip to a page, and take in the advice, as compared to a thesis on creativity, like the book Big Magic.
Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for an ARC of this book.
Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for an ARC of this book.
February 17, 2026
A Long Way is raw in the most disarming way. It doesn’t hand you a method, or a map, or the illusion of a formula. It simply insists: if you want to write, then write. Reading it, I caught myself realizing how often I expect books like this to tidy the chaos—to give me a plan—when in truth, most of my own writing has always happened outside any guideline, assembled instinctively around what felt necessary to be said. The book resonated with that quiet certainty I already carried: there is no secret recipe. And yet, it unsettled me just enough—almost offended me—to start thinking more seriously about fiction, rather than hiding comfortably in non-fiction.
January 14, 2026
I highly recommend this on audio, whether you are a writer or not. Listening to her talk about writing is like listening to Ina Garten talk about cooking: confident, warm, tough, inspiring, and funny, deeply connected with and intuitive with the art form without ever being too precious.
I had also forgotten (!!!!) that she wrote a book that found me when I needed it so badly and was very sad, and it made me feel so much less alone: an exact replica of a figment of my imagination (TW for that one/read the book jacket before reading!).
The two memoirs could not be more different, were written decades and eras apart, and each managed to find me at the exact right moment I most needed them and for that I am very grateful, what a gift when that happens, writers can only hope for their books to find people in that way.
I had also forgotten (!!!!) that she wrote a book that found me when I needed it so badly and was very sad, and it made me feel so much less alone: an exact replica of a figment of my imagination (TW for that one/read the book jacket before reading!).
The two memoirs could not be more different, were written decades and eras apart, and each managed to find me at the exact right moment I most needed them and for that I am very grateful, what a gift when that happens, writers can only hope for their books to find people in that way.
February 27, 2026
Really insightful and enjoyable read! Loved that the author’s personality really came through - I listened to the audiobook and loved that they read it themself!
Can’t wait to start writing again - the kick up the bum I needed.
Can’t wait to start writing again - the kick up the bum I needed.
January 20, 2026
review coming soon
January 18, 2026
Most likely one of the best books I will have read this year. Insightful, honest and so inspiring - has given me such an itch to write.
‘Slow and steady wins the race, but it doesn’t whip the wind through your hair’.
‘Slow and steady wins the race, but it doesn’t whip the wind through your hair’.
December 19, 2025
76: Did I say that real life occurs in the present tense? I don’t believe that. We live in a great simultaneity. Sometimes you pay attention only to the thing in front of you, but generally you bring along your past—your obsessions and wounds and grudges—and your future—your worries and dreams. When you meet somebody you think you might come to love: that is a cacophony of timelines. When you visit a patient in the hospital, all the hospital visits of your life gather around your shoulders, like cherubs in a painting. (pp. 29-30)
This is the craft book that author Elizabeth McCracken insisted, at one point, that she would never write. I’m glad she did: there are so many insights here that could have only been gained through both writing and teaching, and engaging in that feedback loop for years. Here are some of My own Notes on Elizabeth McCracken’s Notes on Writing Fiction:
• A veritable trove of observations.
• I’ve only read one of McCracken’s novels myself, and it was so emotionally devastating that I’ve been a bit wary of other works
• This consists of numbered excerpts; I’ve skipped to the end to see how many: why 280?
• “39: No writing is wasted. Even what we throw out is progress.”
• We don’t get our first prescriptive pieces of advice (do this, not this) until Part IV, where McCracken breaks down the different kinds of narrators.
• In talking about writing fiction, I feel McCracken is really opening me up to ways/modes/reasons of enjoying it as well.
• “If you’re stuck, take notes.” Wow!
• “122: I have no strong feelings about whether writers should describe their characters physically. This is a basic aesthetic choice. Some writers want readers to know what color their characters’ eyes are.”; Well, I do McCracken!
• “135: When your characters look at something, including one another, consider describing what they see instead.”
• So many good examples here, I feel like I would have loved McCracken as a writing instructor
• “202: … Humor isn’t shallow; it’s not a glib coping mechanism. It comes from wells inside us as deep as grief and fury and love”; McCracken is consistently funny throughout. It makes me believe her and believe in her.
• “221: …it’s the critics themselves who should not take the stories they read personally. That is, they should not believe that the stories are written for them, their particular interests and ignorance. Read work and meet the work where its intentions lie: that’s the only way to be useful as a reader.” McCracken clocked most of us on this site! Whoops
• She also clocks publishing, esp. w/r/t titles as marketing.
• This is a reference/craft book not just for writing fiction, but loving it.
January 21, 2026
Read and studied December 18 2025 to January 19 2026.
McCracken was a teacher at Iowa University and is now in Texas. She's a great teacher of creative writing and this book has lots of interesting ideas on which to think. I am much more orderly than she is, a planner, and she is not. She believes in the creative unconscious though and so do I, but I enjoy writing more if I think about it a lot before I write, say like Iris Murdoch and dozens of other famous writers. She is perhaps a stylist who is more interested in the spatial. Some of it I could not decide. I did listen to a podcast with her which explained much more about how she approached writing stories. But I very much enjoyed reading her thoughts which are "put out" in little entries all the way through the book, easy to read and think about. A keeper.
Here is one of my favorite quotes from it and very sound advice and why I do not really read a lot of First person present tense romantasy.
"If the author and characters know a secret and only the reader is left in the dark, that is a needless mystery."
— Elizabeth McCracken
McCracken was a teacher at Iowa University and is now in Texas. She's a great teacher of creative writing and this book has lots of interesting ideas on which to think. I am much more orderly than she is, a planner, and she is not. She believes in the creative unconscious though and so do I, but I enjoy writing more if I think about it a lot before I write, say like Iris Murdoch and dozens of other famous writers. She is perhaps a stylist who is more interested in the spatial. Some of it I could not decide. I did listen to a podcast with her which explained much more about how she approached writing stories. But I very much enjoyed reading her thoughts which are "put out" in little entries all the way through the book, easy to read and think about. A keeper.
Here is one of my favorite quotes from it and very sound advice and why I do not really read a lot of First person present tense romantasy.
"If the author and characters know a secret and only the reader is left in the dark, that is a needless mystery."
— Elizabeth McCracken
December 19, 2025
4.5 out of 5 ⭐️
This author is very quotable and thought provoking in her prose. I loved that this book striped away the idea that writing is only for certain people and that there really is no place for shame, but to just do it. Whenever, however, wherever you feel inspired. This book was very quotable and I enjoyed listening to the authors narration of the audiobook.
This author is very quotable and thought provoking in her prose. I loved that this book striped away the idea that writing is only for certain people and that there really is no place for shame, but to just do it. Whenever, however, wherever you feel inspired. This book was very quotable and I enjoyed listening to the authors narration of the audiobook.
January 18, 2026
It took 30 or so pages to get to the topic of writing, and there are some really good gems in here so I think it's a worthwhile read, but it's kind of disjointed, disorganized, and while there ends up being some great advice, it's mostly just random thoughts. That doesn't necessarily make it bad, just strays off topic.
December 30, 2025
Sometimes you want a book to feel like a companion that you can rely on when the going gets tough and writing fiction sure can be such an endeavor. “Will I think of this again? Will it haunt me?” McCracken guides us to ask the right questions about ourselves and what we want on the page & sometimes that means being in a state of panic but know that liberation will arrive by the end. You have survived. Move forward.
December 20, 2025
I love this little book.
December 31, 2025
The art of knowing the rules of writing fiction, knowing when to break them, and when to be realistic about the craft. Be a genius who has much to learn!
Highly recommend this book!
Highly recommend this book!
February 12, 2026
What a great craft book. In general, I love McCracken’s writing - her humor, her generosity, her metaphors - and this book is no exception. Lovely, inspiring, and insightful.
March 3, 2026
Occasional brilliant flashes. But as an author myself, I found this disappointingly patchy on guidance.
January 2, 2026
Good stuff to think about like - writing is fathoming a character. See how deep you can plumb.
Plot is not events of a story but the consequences of events in a story.
Eliminate conjunctions - and, but, because. This lets the reader see/figure out the connection and makes for stronger writing: I haven’t heard from my son the six months he’s toured the Baltic, but I know he loves me.
I haven’t heard from my son the six months he’s toured the Baltic. I know he loves me.
Plot is not events of a story but the consequences of events in a story.
Eliminate conjunctions - and, but, because. This lets the reader see/figure out the connection and makes for stronger writing: I haven’t heard from my son the six months he’s toured the Baltic, but I know he loves me.
I haven’t heard from my son the six months he’s toured the Baltic. I know he loves me.
January 10, 2026
Definitely something I will come back to again and again.
February 1, 2026
This would make a great gift for someone thinking about writing something. I found this inspiring and mentally restorative after feeling exhausted and stalled from trying to write my own book. I still feel exhausted (emotionally) but not stalled.
February 6, 2026
A mix between Strunk and White and a memoir - a rule book with no rules. Deliciously contradictory. The format was intentional and inspired. McCracken’s work sings.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 124 reviews