This is not a particularly good collection of writing advice. Yes, there are big names. Yes it comes from a relatively prestigious writers’ workshop. No, it doesn’t add much to what you probably already know. In fact, if this is what the contents of this particular workshop are like, then the success is in spite of the content.

Writing advice is only as useful as the personal serendipity you get from it. Someone may say to you, “just start writing gooder sentences”, and it may be your road to Damascus moment. But that doesn’t mean everyone else wants (or needs) to hear it. I have come across books that do a decent job of sharing ideas on how to write without becoming too mundane (and, in the process, be very entertaining.) Just to mention a couple – Thomas Mallon’s In Fact, Essays on Writing and Writers; Robin Wilson’s Paragons: Twelve Master Science Fiction Writers Ply Their Craft; and my absolute favorite, Kate Willhelm’s Storyteller Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers Workshop. None are perfect, but each managed to evoke in me the desire to do more writing.

Such is not the case with this book. The advice feels as if it has come from a high school creative writing class, and there are too many self-evaluative moments from the writers. (For example, why did I have to read two different people’s versions of moving from a first novel mega-success to struggling to write a second novel, and two other descriptions of writing novels that went nowhere?) There are a couple of interesting anecdotes and, since they are all successful writers, they all do a decent job of writing their own piece. But there is really not enough here to warrant the time. (Particularly if the time spent could have been spent working on your writing. You will have learned more from writing badly than from reading these essays.) ( )