Writer's Handbook: Explorations in Writing and Publishing

by James A. Michener

Pulitzer Prize–winning author James A. Michener has written about everything from the pristine islands of the South Pacific and the endless wilds of Africa to Spanish bullfighters, American revolutionaries, and pirates of the Caribbean. Now Michener turns to his favorite and most personal the written word. Reproducing pages from his own handwritten rough drafts and working manuscripts, Michener walks the reader through a step-by-step guide to the entire process of writing, editing, revising, and publishing. Addressing challenges specific to both fiction and nonfiction, all the while providing thoughtful and useful solutions, James A. Michener’s Writer’s Handbook is an invaluable resource for book lovers, editors, and, of course, writers—aspiring and accomplished alike.
 
Praise for James A. Michener
 
“A master storyteller . . . Michener, by any standards, is a phenomenon.” — The Wall Street Journal
 
“Sentence for sentence, writing’s fastest attention grabber.” — The New York Times
 
“Michener has become an institution in America, ranking somewhere between Disneyland and the Library of Congress. You learn a lot from him.” — Chicago Tribune
 
“While he fascinates and engrosses, Michener also educates.” — Los Angeles Times

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Reference

208 pages, Paperback

First published August 25, 1992

About the author

James Albert Michener is best known for his sweeping multi-generation historical fiction sagas, usually focusing on and titled after a particular geographical region. His first novel, Tales of the South Pacific , which inspired the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Toward the end of his life, he created the Journey Prize, awarded annually for the year's best short story published by an emerging Canadian writer; founded an MFA program now, named the Michener Center for Writers, at the University of Texas at Austin; and made substantial contributions to the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, best known for its permanent collection of Pennsylvania Impressionist paintings and a room containing Michener's own typewriter, books, and various memorabilia.

Michener's entry in Who's Who in America says he was born on Feb. 3, 1907. But he said in his 1992 memoirs that the circumstances of his birth remained cloudy and he did not know just when he was born or who his parents were.

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating look at the writing and publishing process. I had read Alaska and Journey and The World Is My Home prior to this book, which is a must. Michener uses actual original pages of his writings and subsequent edits to make his points.

I have a number of "Uncorrected Proofs" of Michener books, but until now I did not understand their place in the process. I was able to look at the proof of The World Is My Home and compare it to the finished book to see the changes that were made at that point in the publishing process.

The last part of the book, entitled Questions Most Frequently Asked by Would-be Writers, would be very helpful to those contemplating a writing career.

[Kayote · Rating 3 out of 5]

He takes you through his process from first(ish) draft to finished page. It is mostly about the high-level process. However, the actual examples were not very useful. Mostly they were too long. It was too hard to trace changes from one step to another, especially since it wasn't the same chunk (usually overlapping, but not identical), and the example was many pages long. He didn't really talk about WHAT he was doing from a word-level, but rather from a process. So he types up new paragraphs and pastes them in, rather than why he put in the new paragraph (he did explain why he took some out). Then he has his assistant type them up on the computer. Then the editors come in.

It is nice that it touches on the part after the author "finishes"--the benefits of editors and continued changes through galleys/etc. I have not seen that in other similar books. That said, he doesn't go into any example in particular detail to really understand how often or how many people or how many times it goes back and forth. The same issue as with the writing section--very high level overview, with some pages with markings as accompaniments.

Perhaps if you copied some pages and did careful comparison with earlier or later you could determine what was going on, but the examples are too long to be able to do that easily as you read, and he does not particularly explain. The pages feel more like illustrations to the text, rather than the text explaining in detail the illustrations.

The Q&A at the end was indeed some of the best part of the book. But overall, Stephen King's On Writing or Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird fit much more what I was expecting from this book.

I did learn some fun things about being an editor in the past, and his process is indeed rather different. I ended up skimming the examples, but enjoyed the text (that was written for this book) as a bit of a window into a very successful writer's mind. It does make me think that version control should be applied to modern writing--so one can go back and look through how you got to where you ended up. The ability to do that is one that, as he notes, is mostly lost with modern computers. But it is fascinating, and sometimes what is cut becomes new stories.

[Angela Boord · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun book but probably only if you’re a writer or a huge Michener fan. It consists mostly of reproductions of his drafts to show his writing process, from idea to first draft through revision and corrected galleys, to final publication. I was ordering another book on Amazon when it showed up on the page for some reason (this edition was reprinted in 2015), so I picked it up on a whim and just spent an evening reading aloud interesting (interesting to me anyway) passages to my husband.

The publishing advice from 1992 is, of course, hopelessly out of date, and as a writer of fiction, I think I got more out of the fiction section then the section about writing his memoir (although the draft of his chapter about what writing means to him and dealing with critics was interesting). But overall, I enjoyed it—more as a museum piece than a how to, though I probably will read back over the pages of editorial feedback on the chapters from Alaska he turned into a standalone novella.

[Apryl Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I adore James Michener's work. With that in mind, I was disappointed in this fine example of 1990s coffee table book for aspiring writers (and Michener fangirls). Yes, it was quite telling to see the steps from writing to publishing all laid out before us. If we needed a reminder as to why so much editing is required through the process, here 'tis. No, it's not engaging. BUT the real gold is worth the panning, so "Questions Most Frequently Asked by Would-be Writers" is a worthy nugget for those of us who missed out on sitting at his professorly feet.

[John Majors · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to be a writer, this book is a five star. If not, it will be of no interest. Over half the book is reproduced pages from various stages of his manuscripts. Fascinating to see how things progress, if that is of interest.

[John Zeleznik · Rating 3 out of 5]

The one walk away that I come away with having read this book is that Michener was a madman. A fascinating look at process.

[Bud Winn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding reference - saving for future use

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

The last chapter Q&A was the most useful part of the book in my opinion. It was interesting to see his process for creating some many massive historical fiction books though.

[Jerry-Mac · Rating 3 out of 5]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14814155