Apparently I started reading this book about four years ago. I finally finished it today, having re-started it a month ago. The difference is that I ignored the layout and intended time-frame.

What this book consists of is 52 short chapters, which were originally published as weekly newspaper columns. Every other week there was a short exercise (so, 26 in all) which encouraged reader participation either by letter or on a dedicated website forum. Apparently there was widespread enthusiasm and involvement, and a great deal of discussion. Essentially a huge online writing support group was formed for this period.

But it doesn't work like that in book form, so I decided to read the book in a month, doing six exercises per week. Taken as having a newspaper column style of writing, it's very well done - light-hearted, with plenty of personal anecdotes, and some gems of good advice thrown in. It's not a guide to writing a novel - the title is perhaps misleading - but has ideas to kick-start creativity and to get a stagnant novel going again. So we write biographies of our characters, think about incidents from the point of view of someone in another country, invent a chapter when someone breaks a thumb, re-write paragraphs without adjectives... and a whole lot more. I didn't think the exercises were necessarily relevant, but pretty much any writing exercise can lead to something more constructive, which is what I found.

I don't know that I learned anything new about the novel-writing process, but I found the book inspiring nonetheless. I found the last few exercises a bit disappointing - looking back, looking forward, noting what I had learned, etc, and didn't do those ones. But the bulk of the book was very readable and helpful, and I would recommend it to anyone who has read umpteen guides to writing, and perhaps started several novels that have not gone anywhere. This is a different kind of approach, and I found it refreshing. ( )

Very useful (and reassuring) while not being dictatorial about process. Doughty has a more organic approach to finding out what your story's arc and themes are than some of the charts and worksheets and outline points writing tomes out there: you'll get there by doing more writing (not necessarily writing that will be in the novel) than by making lists or filling in structure charts. ( )