Setting Our Course
Welcome, friend, to the first part of the series I’m doing this summer here on my blog: re-reading Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin and breaking it down one chapter per week! It’s a nonfiction piece geared specifically for creative writers. Each chapter ends with an exercise shaped by that chapter’s contents, and I’ll include those with my posts. You can find today’s down at the bottom.
But as for the book…
I first read this back in 2020, and these were my thoughts at the time:
I so appreciate Le Guin’s gift for brevity. It’s obvious she knows what she’s talking about when it comes to wordsmithing, but she doesn’t carry on and on, though I’m sure she could. Her voice is both clear and efficient, and I find that makes the content of her lessons that much more accessible. For such a small book, there were many nuggets of writing wisdom to learn from. Personally, I found the best way to go through this text was to give each chapter a full day to read, reflect on, and work through the given exercise(s). In that way, reading this book was almost like a stay-at-home creative writing seminar. Great for any writer who’s looking to have a little more structure in their writing life.
It crossed my mind not too long ago, when I was reorganizing some of my home library shelves, that I ought to pick this book up, again. I love having time dedicated to developing my creative projects and plots, and there’s nothing that can replace the act of literally sitting down and writing. You need to being doing the writing, if you want to be bettering your writing.
Yet, there’s value to be found in workshops, seminars, critique groups, and other places where you discuss and consider your skills. Every so often you gotta evaluate how you’ve grown, where your strengths lie, and what weak spots you want to boost. Revisiting the lessons in this book is one way I’m doing that.
Before I actually get to sharing thoughts from the Introduction and Chapter One, you may first be wondering who this Ursula K. Le Guin lady is. What credibility or experience did she have that gave her the authority?
Well, to start, in her lifetime, she published more than sixty books. Genres ranged from fiction to fantasy to drama and translation. She’s best known for her sci-fi and speculative fiction, namely The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), which is part of a larger series called the Earthsea Cycle. She’s got quite the literary legacy and is considered a chief character in helping to broaden the genre of speculative fiction. Before Harry Potter, she was the first to have a boy wizard main character and a wizarding school. Other female writers have pointed to her as the influence behind their ability to shake off self-doubt or to dive into the world of fantasy; a genre women, unless you were Mary Shelley with Frankenstein and his monster, weren’t typically found writing in.
Consider this for a moment. The Hugo Award is an annual literary award, established in 1953, and is given to the author of the best sci-fi or fantasy work of the previous year. Originally, there were seven categories—thus, seven winners every year—but it’s been expanded over the years to encompass seventeen categories. All this to say, Le Guin was nominated for a Hugo twenty-six times and won eight of them. And that’s barely scratching the surface of all the awards and recognition she received in her lifetime.
So, that’s the lady we’re learning from. She’s given us this book, short and sweet yet full of valuable little nuggets.
Much of what she starts out with in the introduction is just laying out framework and intention. She considers this text as “a handbook for storytellers,” and it’s “aimed at story-writers who seek thought, discussion, and practice in the fundamentals of narrative prose” (x). If that’s you, you’re in the right place.
Then what she focuses on in Chapter One: The Sound of Your Writing is, essentially, your writing voice. It’s all about the sounds words make, rhythm of sentences, and understanding how to make your prose poetic. If poetic, to you, means flowery, over-the-top speech I’m gonna stop you right there. As Le Guin’s talking about it, it means the imaginative, sensory style you express imagery and ideas.
Le Guin believes that “an awareness of what your writing sounds like is an essential skill for a writer,” which is why she emphasizes actually reading aloud the things you’ve written (2). That’s a chief piece of advice from her. It may seem silly or unnecessary, but you need to hear things to help you know how dialogue is sounding. Is it natural or stilted? Does your sentence have rhythm? Do the words you picked sound awkward together?
This is the first chapter because it’s so important, and she’s asking you to, if you don’t know it already, learn what your writing voice sounds like.
Everyone has one, and it’s those certain flares or touches you like to use that lend a unique quality to the things you write. It takes time to develop one, and it’s okay if, in the beginning of your writing journey, your voice is influenced by your favorite authors. We all learn from someone somewhere. Over time as you keep practicing and keep writing, it will evolve into something totally your own.
Have you already picked up on little ticks or trends about your grammar usage, vocab preferences, or sentence structuring from your writing? I know one of my things is that I love the Em dash. Don’t ask me why. I just do, and one of the things I keep an eye out for when I edit is if I’ve used the dash too liberally and need to employ other punctuation.
Do you know what your preferences and/or peculiarities are? Are you wondering why it’s important to consider them? Are you skeptical of sentences having rhythms?
Well, they can and they should and it’s important because “the chief duty of a narrative sentence is to lead to the next sentence—to keep the story going” (2.) As Le Guin points out in the introduction, “story is change” and it needs movement and momentum to be so (xiv). Rhythm, flow, and cadence all help you make the necessary change and keep the story moving along. That’s why she begins with this concept and asks us to really consider sound, as it’s either helping or hindering the progress we want our plots to make.
Again, this doesn’t necessarily equate to “beautiful” writing or wordy prose. Sometimes it means messing around with onomatopoeia, alliteration, repetition, made-up words, and whatever other tools language can offer. This is why she views the rules of writing, such as grammar and syntax, as vital because, once you know and practice them, you can write with more freedom. You can take what you know, spin it how you need to, and make it work.
Don’t forget that we’re not just expressing ideas with our prose; we’re telling a story. That is art, which is enabled by craft.
Le Guin provides excerpts from books that she thinks are great examples of excellent prose due to its rhythm and flow. They’re fine examples, but perhaps it’d be more worth your while to pick up your favorite book and read a few paragraphs. Why is it working? What is the author doing with their voice and sound that’s giving the story momentum and propelling it forward? This little book is meant to be a help to you and your writing development, but let’s not forget that every book you read, fiction or nonfiction, can serve as a textbook of sorts. Why not take a closer look at one you adore and put into words what it’s doing well?
The exercise Le Guin gives us for this chapter is broken down into two parts. But first, she has rules for us regarding the ideal way to approach these practice times.
You get 30 minutes to write. No more than that. She suggests setting a timer, getting focused, and getting it done. The quickness of it all is meant to keep you from over-deliberating or carrying on too long.
Don’t worry about having a finished product by the end of those 30 minutes. The point of these exercises is to practice, not to whip up your next fully-formed short story.
Give yourself time before critiquing or editing what you’ve written. Le Guin suggests not looking at your exercise piece until a day later, at the earliest. Only after there’s been some space should you look at it with revision and editing in mind.
As for today’s exercises, here’s what we’ve got.
EXERCISE ONE: BEING GORGEOUS
Part One: Write a paragraph to a page of narrative that’s meant to be read aloud. Use onomatopoeia, alliteration, repetition, rhythmic effects, made-up words or names, dialect—any kind of sound effect you like—but not rhyme or meter.
Le Guin says, “I want you to write for pleasure—to play…This isn’t ‘free writing,’ but it’s similar in that you’re relaxing control: you’re encouraging the words themselves—the sounds of them, the beats and echoes—to lead you on” (8).
Should you need an idea for how to get started, she suggests you might try telling the climax of a ghost story or invent an island and start walking across it, describing what happens.
Part Two: In a paragraph or so, describe an action, or a person feeling strong emotion—joy, fear, grief. Try to make the rhythm and movement of the sentences embody or represent the physical reality you’re writing about.
Don’t forget! Le Guin stresses the significance of reading your writing out loud so guess what you’re going to do with this one when the time comes? That’s right—read it aloud, even if you’re by yourself! Perform it, even, and see what you learn about your writing voice when you hear it.
If you’re in the sharing mood, feel free to submit your exercises to me. I’d love to know how Le Guin’s prompts are being interpreted and played with.
See you next week for Chapter Two!