Simi’s Reviews > Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew > Status Update

Schwarzchild must have read this book in preparing to teach his Creative Writing class. I see a lot of his limited beliefs in the pages of Le Guin's advise. (Yes, I'm still salty 13 years later!)

The advise around POV shifts is feeling a tiny bit dated, because everyone and their mother is doing multiple POV these days. Granted, as Le Guin warns, you've got to do it well or you'll leave the reader feeling very twisted and turned about.

Some of this advice feels a tiny bit outdated. Le Guin approaches POV with a rigidity that I don't think is as necessary in today's fictional and narrative writing.

The writing is a bit difficult to get through just because Le Guin chooses to write in a atypical sentence structures and the delivery is often overcomplicated.

On the flip side, intentional repetition is a thing of beauty. I try to incorporate that in my writing as well. Done right, in the right place within a piece, it can really lift the whole thing to the next level.

Ha! I was just struggling with repetition in a recent writing activity. I am hyperaware of repetition and work to avoid the clunky, unintentional version. But when you're writing without editing, its bound to happen. And because I'm so aware and wary, I hear it more loudly in my writing than others do. It's interesting to realize others aren't necessarily as bothered by poor diversity in words as I might be.

That was rough! I can't tell if she was intentionally messing with the sentences & their structure, or if it was a lack of editing. There are some glaring mistakes, but it breaks my mind to think that Le Guin could make such mistakes & that this guidebook has seen so many reprints without them being caught and fixed.
I had started off thinking I'd want a copy of this book for my shelves, but the more I read it...nah!

I struggled with the words a bit. I did not find Kipling or Twain or any of the other writers' works to be "gorgeous" and easy to get through. I was tripping over my own tongue reading them. But that is, perhaps, more a me thing than the actual work by these much-celebrated authors.
I like the exercise suggestions and can't wait to incorporate them into the Workshop!