In the world of creative writing manuals, a new voice is causing a stir by defiantly breaking all the established rules. Elizabeth McCracken, the acclaimed novelist and former tutor at the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, has entered the fray with her new book, A Long Game: How to Write Fiction. Published by Jonathan Cape at £14.99, it offers a bracing and perverse antidote to decades of cosy, chipper advice.
A Rebellious Entrance into the Craft Book Arena
McCracken makes her intentions clear from the very first sentence. "Nobody knows how to write a book," she declares, immediately setting her work apart from the motivational, cheerleader-like tone she criticises in popular guides. She confesses a dislike for traditional craft books, suggesting she may never have finished reading one. This is not the voice of a benign, pipe-smoking mentor but of a naughty, perverse, and quietly exhibitionist older sister to the writing world.
Her arrival comes three decades after the era of figures like Malcolm Bradbury, when workshop jargon like 'trope', 'POV', and 'character arc' was confined to small circles. Today, that language permeates how we discuss everything, even politics. McCracken’s book is a direct challenge to the "chipper, cheerleaderish" style of manuals such as Walter Mosley's This Year You Write Your Novel, aiming instead to liven up a well-established subgenre.
Demolishing the Most Hackneyed Writing Advice
For writers paralysed by familiar workshop mantras, McCracken offers intense, experience-distilled antidotes. She takes aim at the most clichéd pieces of advice, providing liberating counter-arguments.
On the command to "Write what you know," she offers a more nuanced perspective. Similarly, she dismantles the tyranny of "Show, don't tell," freeing authors from a rigid binary. Perhaps most refreshing is her take on the pervasive instruction to "Write every day." McCracken retorts with characteristic wit and self-awareness, stating, "Every-day writers have a clear answer to the question, How will you get your work done? Me, I harness the power of my own self-loathing."
Her epigrammatic style delivers memorable, underline-worthy quips, such as: "To feel ashamed about writing isn’t interesting, but writing about shame is fascinating." This philosophy positions writing not as a rule-bound exercise, but as a form of "sustained mischievous truancy."
A Liberating Philosophy for Rule-Haunted Writers
McCracken’s core argument is that great writing has never been about compiling and obeying a list of rules. If it were, the most celebrated authors would have lost interest immediately. Her view is that writing is an act of exploration and, sometimes, deliberate misbehaviour because it is more interesting.
This perspective is described as "amazingly freeing" for those haunted by the supposed rules of the craft. The inoculation she provides may be bracing and even painful, but the result is a chance to stop sweating over dogma and simply get on with the work. Her book stands alongside but defiantly apart from classic guides like John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft, and Robert McKee’s Story.
Ultimately, A Long Game is a call to embrace the particular insanity of a writing life, armed with honesty and a healthy disregard for convention. It is a testament to the idea that true creativity often flourishes not by being good, but by being authentically, compellingly itself.
