Writing about Writing (and Indie Publishing)
The most interesting essay in Tom Bissell’s collection, Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation, takes a close look at the differing styles of writing books and the kinds of promises they make to prospective writers. Ostensibly a survey of several different books, Bissell pithily outlines the rules of engagement for each type: the users manual, exemplified by Strunk and White, which focuses on the mechanical aspects of crafting sentences; the Golden Parachute books, such as Donald Maas’ Writing the Breakout Novel, which trades equally on the promise of creative fulfilment and future commercial success; the Nuts & Bolts crowd, where a mid-list writer share techniques and exercises that worked for them; the tea and angels crowd, driven by the same impulse as the nuts and bolts crew, but with a considerably more mystical and muse-driven approach. Then, of course, there’s the Olympus books: written by highly esteemed writers, wether it’s Stephen King or Margaret Atwood or Joyce Carol Oates, and
