Novel Ideas: Contemporary Authors Share the Creative Process
Shoup, Barbara and Margaret Love-Denman.
Novel Ideas: Contemporary Authors Share the Creative Process.
Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2009.
2nd ed. 334 pp. $22.95 (paperback)
Frequently books which purport to teach or inspire creative writing lapse into restrictive pedagogy or mystical flights of fancy and end up fulfilling neither premise nor promise. Fortunately, Novel Ideas by Barbara Shoup and Margaret-Love Denman does neither. This second edition of a well-received text first published nearly a decade ago is clean, crisp, informative, and welcoming. It is a well-made book with a superb cover design, and the content does not disappoint.
The deceptively simple construction frames question-and-answer interviews with twenty novelists by an introductory how-to and a concluding set of writing exercises. The authors, both novelists and teachers of creative writing, speak with authority and experience. Their seventy page explication of the writing process covers imagining the novel, identifying the elements of fiction, seeing it all through, and revising one’s work. The writers’ interviews comprise the bulk of the text, and each one stands alone as an interesting vignette. Taken together, they provide a nicely illustrative, never didactic, guide to novel making.
The concluding sixteen pages of exercises are designed for browsing and are keyed to the specific techniques and writing strategies exemplified by each interviewee’s personal observations. These literary calisthenics could easily serve as assignments in a creative writing class or just as aptly as a means for jump-starting the seasoned novelist who needs to write his way out of a specific difficulty.
The novice, the professional, or the student scholar who desires fresh insight into how working writers sustain their writing lives and how they make their books could all benefit from Novel Ideas. This publication would be a worthwhile addition to any collection (academic, public, or private) whose readership is interested in that peculiar balance of craft and magic which produces a novel.
Teresa Neaves
Librarian
Mitchell, McNutt & Sams Law Firm
Entry Filed under: Book Reviews
Posted on: September 29th, 2009
