Writing can feel like an endless series of decisions. How does one face the blank page? Move a character around a room? Deal with time? Undertake revision? The good and bad news is that in fiction writing, there are no definitive answers to such questions: writers must come up with their own. Elizabeth McCracken shares insights gleaned along the way, offering practical tips and incisive thoughts about her own work as an artist.
Sometimes useful, always charming ... It can sound as though she believes most things that are recognizably fiction-writing can’t be taught at all. The advice she gives is either highly specific or quite vague ... Where A Long Game falls short in giving clear structure to a writing practice, it says more about creative work in general.
She’s skeptical of anything resembling a work routine and has little patience for write-every-day prescriptivists. Indeed, almost all prescriptions are hard for her to endorse ... It works because her brand of inspiration isn’t cheap uplift, just clear reports from the trenches about the sorts of things that can waylay a writer, both on the page and in life ... Relatively gentle proscriptions like these may grate on the writer who wants a firmer lifeline.
McCracken’s is the naughty older sister view of writing. And I agree with it. Writing isn’t about compiling a list of rules and then obeying them ... Not your usual piece of creative writing workshop advice, but true to the particular insanity of this scribbled life.
