The Writer Laid Bare

 

Something terrible happened as I was unloading the car after borrowing Lee Kofman's The Writer Laid Bare (as recommended by Susan Green) from the local library. I had my hands full -- handbag, book basket, letters, my daughter's keep cup, keys. And of course the inevitable happened: the keep cup tilted, and coffee dribbled out into the book basket, all over the library books... which were in the worst possible position, spines down, pages up... So I have thoroughly ruined two perfectly good books. I haven't confessed to the library yet (I've been in iso with the dreaded spicy cough) but I will of course pay for their replacement. However! You should have heard me cursing Daughter Number One and her abandoned coffee -- it was not an edifying scene.

ANYWAY. I've read a few of these how-to-write guides lately and Kofman's is definitely one of the most enjoyable. Temperamentally we are quite different; Kofman relies more on instinct and intuition than I do (though I could probably stand to loosen up a bit), and it was delightfully refreshing to see the way she tosses all those 'rules' overboard. So you love adverbs? Go ahead and use them! You want to 'tell', rather than 'show'? Who cares, sometimes that's a more efficient way to go. Start in the middle of the action? Sure, you can do that, but who says you have to?

I so enjoyed Kofman's personal story. She is generous is sharing her own failures and misfires in a way which is very reassuring. She is frightening accomplished, fluent in several languages, and has read widely. She quotes from a huge range of other authors, including one of my favourite non-fiction writers, Robert Macfarlane, whose book The Old Ways I was co-reading (it is really spooky how often this happens). I wonder if I'll get to keep this book now I've destroyed it? If I'd had to choose a how-to-write guide to keep, it would probably have been The Writer Laid Bare.