|
Full disclosure: Elizabeth George is one of my all-time
favorite mystery writers --- actually, George, like the others on
that shortlist (including P.D. James and Ruth Rendell), writes in a
more specific arm of the genre, known as the "literary mystery."
What this means to readers is that the books these authors produce
have complex characters, beautifully constructed (sometimes
intricate) plots and fine, subtle use of language that manages to
simultaneously contribute to the mystery at hand and to delight on
its own.
What this means to writers is that Elizabeth George
knows her stuff. How well she knows it is readily apparent in WRITE
AWAY: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life,
because she grounds most of her instructional examples in excerpts
from great literature, including classics like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
and modern suspense/thriller novels such as MYSTIC RIVER. George
taught English at El Toro High School in Huntington Beach,
California for over a decade before turning her back away from the
lectern and towards her computer screen in the mid-1980s, and she
now frequently teaches creative writing. Her pedantry is of the
pleasant variety, meant not to bury potential writers but to
encourage them.
Still, this book does have its pedantic
moments, especially as George elucidates her process. One of the
most important parts of her process is creating a "character map"
before she begins her first draft. As she explained why and how she
does this, it made perfect sense --- for her. I love reading
literary mysteries, but they are not a genre I'm likely to write
myself. WRITE AWAY, at first, seemed to me to be an excellent way to
learn about how to write an Elizabeth George novel. Indeed, it's not
as if she's hiding what she's doing: her subtitle says it all. And
she begins each chapter with a brief section from one of her own
journals kept while writing in order to show that even published
authors get the blues.
Yet, from the moment I began to read
George's book, I was drawn in by her enthusiasm for writing. She may
have been describing what works for her, but her energy and
excitement made me want to discover what works best for me. George
is quite right when she says that she is puzzled by those who
believe writing can't be taught; it is, after all, at least halfways
a craft. In the sections where she discusses different techniques as
"tools" and says that using these well is part of a building
process, she reminded me that artisanal skill can be just as
important as artistic inspiration.
George also reminds
would-be, struggling and working writers that all the art and craft
in the world can't help if you don't have discipline; her chapter
titled "The Value of Bum Glue" (that colorful noun taken from
Australian bestselling author Bryce Courtenay) should be read by
every writer and writing student in the country. But one of the last
things she hits on, while not new under the sun, is made urgent
again by her own thoughtful, elegant prose: "Lots of people want to
have written; they don't want to write. In other words, they want to
see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning
picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not
at the beginning. To reach that end you have to be willing just to
set it aside, knowing that it may never happen at all but not much
caring because it's the writing that matters to you; it's the
mystery and the magic of putting words on paper that are truly
important. If you don't feel this way, then you want to be an
author, not a writer."
On one hand, I wonder why she didn't
put that up front. On the other, I see exactly why she saved these
words for last. Great mystery writer that she is, Elizabeth George
has forced us to march through the forest tree by tree before
revealing her secret.
--- Reviewed by
Bethanne Kelly Patrick
• Click here now to buy this book from
Amazon.
© Copyright 2004, Bookreporter.com. All rights
reserved.
Back to
top.
|
