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Beate Not the Poore Desk: A Writer to Young Writers
For the first time, National Book Award-winner Walter Wangerin, Jr., turns his keen eye upon the craft of writing. Adding a lifetime of experience to the wisdom and examples of other writers (Shakespeare, Goethe, Berry, Chaucer, and many more), he builds for us an intricate picture of the craft and its many subtitles.
141 pages, Paperback
Published November 15, 2016
10 people are currently reading
216 people want to read
About the author
Walter Wangerin Jr.
95 books229 followersWalter Wangerin Jr. is widely recognized as one of the most gifted writers writing today on the issues of faith and spirituality. Starting with the renowned Book of the Dun Cow, Wangerin's writing career has encompassed most every genre: fiction, essay, short story, children's story, meditation, and biblical exposition. His writing voice is immediately recognizable, and his fans number in the millions. The author of over forty books, Wangerin has won the National Book Award, New York Times Best Children's Book of the Year Award, and several Gold Medallions, including best-fiction awards for both The Book of God and Paul: A Novel. He lives in Valparaiso, Indiana, where he is Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
April 15, 2021
Profound. Wonderful. I can't recommend it enough.
November 9, 2024
A memoir on the craft of writing. Good thoughts on writing truthfully through sympathetic and keen-eyed observations. These allow the author to build something authentic. Authenticity in the story world and characters then builds trust between reader and author. I also appreciated WW's thoughts on how a well told story, for good or ill, may have an influence on the kind of story that the reader sees him or herself in. Writers may bring both comfort or despair, peace or anger. Story narratives offer to assign meanings to life experience. Wield that power with respect and care.
May 17, 2020
A very short, very good book offering guidance to writers, especially of fiction. The subtitle suggests this is a book for young or new writers, but I’d unhesitatingly recommend it to writers of any age or range of experience, as Wangerin’s advice is winsomely presented and to the point.
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December 2, 2023This was great. I wish I would have read it back in high school, but I still gleaned from Wangerin’s wisdom and sage advice. This would also be great for those teaching or influencing young writers in any capacity and I’ll stick it in my back pocket for sure.
May 10, 2024
Ethical and practical advice, some timely. Well written for the eager teenage writers. He strews spoilers for just about every piece of literature he mentioned, which I found delightful but might annoy other readers.
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January 4, 2025A nice little writing manifesto. Read this to spark some ideas for the Creative Writing course I’m teaching.
February 27, 2017
In this short book, Wangerin offers a wealth of knowledge and insight for writers. Filled with expert advice, much aimed at novelists, writers of any genre will benefit from his teaching. Wangerin offers stories from his own journey, lessons from the legends of the past, and practical lessons on ethics, writing long, and revising. He is a master of the craft and this is an opportunity to learn from his decades of experience.
November 9, 2016
Walter Wangerin, Jr. offers humble, wise encouragement to those young writers who love words and sentences and language. He speaks of stories in particular and with reverence and draws from his own reading, writing, and experience to point young writers in a direction--toward penning novels or poems or non-fiction of worth. His sage advice will bless writers and readers alike, encouraging people to write and read great literature, seeking truth. Wangerin is honest; I finished his book wanting to write and with a sense of the humility and hard work good writing demands of its author. "You may be Proust," he says in a chapter on keeping a day job, "but it's unlikely. Assume that you are not." This is one of the best books on writing I've read.
June 19, 2024
Should anyone ask for a recommendation of books to read to help him become a better writer, I happily add Walter Wangerin, Jr.’s Beate Not the Poore Desk: A Writer to Young Writers to my brief list:
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir Of the Craft
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
William Zinsser, On Writing Well
While not an intentional writing manual, I learned from Robert Pirsig instructions to his students about writing in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Wangerin’s book has two parts. First Part: Art: It’s Dynamics and Its Potency. Second Part: Practical Advice. Both parts are equally valuable. Each chapter within is pithy. No word or image is wasted. His personal stories and illustrations from literature all work to persuade the writer to work harder and smarter at his craft. The result may transform a readers life.
What is needed to get to this point? A love for words and sentences. The tenacity to keep writing, thinking, observing, expanding the imagination, revising, and attending to the ethics of storytelling.
The practical advice includes reading good literature, observe the world and its ways accurately, practice writing through journal writing and correspondence, and getting out of the writing room and into the real world to engage with real people. Wangerin advocates keeping your day job for several reasons. On page 87, he notes that “William Carlos Williams was a physician. T.S. Eliot was an editor. Wendell Berry is a farmer. Wallace Stevens was the vice president of an insurance firm in Hartford, CT. George Herbert, a pastor in England, Gerard Manley Hopkins a Catholic priest, … John Gardner was a an academic, a Ph.D. professor, a philosopher, and a medievalist.”
As most writers wish to be read by a larger audience, Wangerin relates his experiences of securing an agent and connecting with publishers.
All good advice and time well spent.
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir Of the Craft
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
William Zinsser, On Writing Well
While not an intentional writing manual, I learned from Robert Pirsig instructions to his students about writing in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Wangerin’s book has two parts. First Part: Art: It’s Dynamics and Its Potency. Second Part: Practical Advice. Both parts are equally valuable. Each chapter within is pithy. No word or image is wasted. His personal stories and illustrations from literature all work to persuade the writer to work harder and smarter at his craft. The result may transform a readers life.
What is needed to get to this point? A love for words and sentences. The tenacity to keep writing, thinking, observing, expanding the imagination, revising, and attending to the ethics of storytelling.
The practical advice includes reading good literature, observe the world and its ways accurately, practice writing through journal writing and correspondence, and getting out of the writing room and into the real world to engage with real people. Wangerin advocates keeping your day job for several reasons. On page 87, he notes that “William Carlos Williams was a physician. T.S. Eliot was an editor. Wendell Berry is a farmer. Wallace Stevens was the vice president of an insurance firm in Hartford, CT. George Herbert, a pastor in England, Gerard Manley Hopkins a Catholic priest, … John Gardner was a an academic, a Ph.D. professor, a philosopher, and a medievalist.”
As most writers wish to be read by a larger audience, Wangerin relates his experiences of securing an agent and connecting with publishers.
All good advice and time well spent.
July 13, 2023
4.5 stars.
A quick read--winsome, thoughtful, a little off-beat. The thoughts seemed a little loosely-collected sometimes, a bit rambling. I didn't always get his point right away, the parenthetical tidbits helped clarify things for me. I really liked his discussion of the writer's ethical responsibilities, as I have never heard that discussed, especially from a Christian perspective. The craft advice, in the second part of the book, was brief but helpful.
I wouldn't necessarily recommend this as a craft book, since it's so poetic and sparse, but it is a good reminder of why we writers write. Maybe a writer's vision sort of book.
A quick read--winsome, thoughtful, a little off-beat. The thoughts seemed a little loosely-collected sometimes, a bit rambling. I didn't always get his point right away, the parenthetical tidbits helped clarify things for me. I really liked his discussion of the writer's ethical responsibilities, as I have never heard that discussed, especially from a Christian perspective. The craft advice, in the second part of the book, was brief but helpful.
I wouldn't necessarily recommend this as a craft book, since it's so poetic and sparse, but it is a good reminder of why we writers write. Maybe a writer's vision sort of book.
April 18, 2022
Of all the books about writing that I have read, this one takes the cake.
A healthy mixture of theoretical and practical advice covers even the stickier topics avoided by Stephen King or Anne Lamott.
Though the author approaches the topic from his Christian worldview (how else should he do it?), this book is a treasure trove for writers of all stripes.
Highly recommended.
A healthy mixture of theoretical and practical advice covers even the stickier topics avoided by Stephen King or Anne Lamott.
Though the author approaches the topic from his Christian worldview (how else should he do it?), this book is a treasure trove for writers of all stripes.
Highly recommended.
February 20, 2025
The advice he gives is not particularly profound, and one would be better off reading the works of well-known authors to get the same advice with a little more depth. There is a reason he quotes so many other authors. His advice was either very basic and narrow or would be best ignored since it might throw one off a bit. There was nothing really terrible about it, though.
December 24, 2017
There was a lot of familiar advice in this book, but it was presented in such a pleasant, conversational fashion that I enjoyed the review.
August 5, 2020
Quintessential Wangerin. Solid, simple, creative prose to guide a writer.
March 13, 2021
2.5 stars
September 19, 2021
Helpful and interesting for those who want to write. It is not just for "young" writers, but those of any age hoping to get started.
December 29, 2024
Helpful advice here. Perhaps someday I will follow it.
March 1, 2017
Wise, winsome, well-crafted, and worth any writer's (or reader's) time. Wangerin confirmed my conviction that some of the best writing is found in books about the craft of writing itself.
June 2, 2022
I will keep my rating at 5 stars because of the way this book opened my mind upon my first reading, even though I probably wouldn't give my reread experience the same stamp of wholehearted agreement with its content. I first read this book at a very formative time in my life. Ironically, reading it probably set me on a trajectory toward critical thinking which made me able to look back on it with a more critical eye.
That being said, Wangerin is a good teacher. A lot of his advice is very applicable to aspiring professional writers, just not to hobby writers like me. But I liked what he had to say about art putting a name to the unnamable, and the ethical obligations of artists. I will be thinking about whether I ought to stay pretty much totally digital or move away from it.
Some helpful quotes for me to look back on:
"...think of revision as forgiveness. Go ahead and make a mess of it, but truck on. At your first pass, sin boldly and fearlessly against the standards of your craft and your own expectations. Then, once you've gotten your stride back, return, revise, and grace will cover you."
"It isn't enough to describe a character only once when she enters the narrative, and then leave it up to the reader to continue 'seeing' her as things progress. The reader must keep seeing the subject. Therefore, choose a particular characteristic and refer to it often, but variously, whenever she appears. For example, do her fingers flutter at her hair? Does he continually look askance, unable to keep his eyes fixed on someone else? What about clothing? Shoes? Dapper or sloppy? Does a woman dress in baubles? Does a man smoke a pipe? Does he always carry a bumbershoot? What does he do with his bumbershoot?" (The simple act of zeroing in on one of my characters' hands helped me know her so much clearer!)
"So then: sweetly question the scene before you. Does the dialogue (different dialects in different mouths) reveal character as much as it offers information? And does it give more than information? Does it both inform and further the plot? What minor gesture (you'll get the grand ones easily enough) unlocks a whole trove of meaning?"
That being said, Wangerin is a good teacher. A lot of his advice is very applicable to aspiring professional writers, just not to hobby writers like me. But I liked what he had to say about art putting a name to the unnamable, and the ethical obligations of artists. I will be thinking about whether I ought to stay pretty much totally digital or move away from it.
Some helpful quotes for me to look back on:
"...think of revision as forgiveness. Go ahead and make a mess of it, but truck on. At your first pass, sin boldly and fearlessly against the standards of your craft and your own expectations. Then, once you've gotten your stride back, return, revise, and grace will cover you."
"It isn't enough to describe a character only once when she enters the narrative, and then leave it up to the reader to continue 'seeing' her as things progress. The reader must keep seeing the subject. Therefore, choose a particular characteristic and refer to it often, but variously, whenever she appears. For example, do her fingers flutter at her hair? Does he continually look askance, unable to keep his eyes fixed on someone else? What about clothing? Shoes? Dapper or sloppy? Does a woman dress in baubles? Does a man smoke a pipe? Does he always carry a bumbershoot? What does he do with his bumbershoot?" (The simple act of zeroing in on one of my characters' hands helped me know her so much clearer!)
"So then: sweetly question the scene before you. Does the dialogue (different dialects in different mouths) reveal character as much as it offers information? And does it give more than information? Does it both inform and further the plot? What minor gesture (you'll get the grand ones easily enough) unlocks a whole trove of meaning?"
January 13, 2017
A master writer giving advice to young writers. Yes, thank you.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews