essays against Amazon.So her book on writing – “Steering the Craft: A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story” – is not something any aspiring fiction writer should ignore. The book – significantly revised from its original 1998 edition – avoids laying down strict rules, but takes a back-to-basics approach to prose writing. Each chapter includes examples of good writing to emulate, including Tolkien and a tale from a Native American tribe of Oregon, but with emphasis on writers like Kipling, Dickens and Virginia Woolf. The book, in short, is both open and in some ways resolutely old-fashioned.
Salon talks to the literary legend about her new craft book and why sci-fi writers should read Virginia Woolf
">Ursula K. Le Guin on myths, Modernism and why “I’m a little bit suspicious of the MFA program”
It’s hard to think of another living author who has written so well for so long in so many styles as Ursula K. Le Guin. Best known as a novelist of science fiction (“The Left Hand of Darkness”) and fantasy (“A Wizard of Earthsea”), Le Guin has also written award-winning short stories in numerous genres, literary criticism, poetry, a novel set in Rome in the age of “The Aeneid” (“Lavinia”), and angry, eloquentessays against Amazon.
So her book on writing – “Steering the Craft: A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story” – is not something any aspiring fiction writer should ignore. The book – significantly revised from its original 1998 edition – avoids laying down strict rules, but takes a back-to-basics approach to prose writing. Each chapter includes examples of good writing to emulate, including Tolkien and a tale from a Native American tribe of Oregon, but with emphasis on writers like Kipling, Dickens and Virginia Woolf. The book, in short, is both open and in some ways resolutely old-fashioned.