Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story

Steering the Craft is a fantastic short guide packed with lots of great insights and writing exercises across a range of different aspects of the craft. Mainly aimed at the kind of writer who’s been doing this thing a little while and wants to hone their craft, it’s an excellent resource for both lone and group work. As such, it doesn’t go over the basics like how to create characters, build fictional worlds etc… But focuses more on style.I have to admit, I haven’t tried the exercises myself at the time of writing this review - I wanted to read through and see what they were first - but I’ll absolutely be going back to do them, because they seem very useful indeed. The examples in the book are plentiful, and they’re all excerpts from classic literature (Twain, Austen, Woolf, Dickens etc…) which precisely illustrate the aspects of writing the section highlights, from how to use repetition to the different types of POV (and switching between them), and much more besides. There’s nothing specific about writing science fiction in here, apart from a passing mention about worldbuilding in the context of avoiding info-dumps, but I didn’t expect there to be. All the lessons within are applicable to writing as a whole, regardless of genre.One of the things that particularly spoke to me was the section about writing from a perspective that is not your own. I don’t struggle to empathise usually, but writing from a perspective I personally disagree with can be tricky to get right; to go deep and nuanced so as to not create a cartoon. And it’s a necessary part of writing complex characters, rather than simple authorial mouthpieces. The exercises in this section force you into writing from those kinds of perspectives a few times over with variations, which seems a good way to drive the point home. It’s especially good for those who learn by doing. Never fear, though, Le Guin doesn’t force us to do all the work. Thankfully, she provides a wealth of suitable prompts and ideas as jumping off points, as well as word count limits and detailed instructions. There’s even an exercise on writing a page worth of narrative with no adjectives or adverbs! It sounds like a marvellous challenge. Speaking of adverbs, as expected Le Guin takes a far more balanced stance on their use than a lot of writing advice you might find on the internet, which oftentimes tells budding authors to never use them. In fact, Le Guin deliberately avoids hard and fast “Rules of Good Writing”, and the book holds a good few opinion pieces in which she expresses her general disdain for them, as they often strip out all nuance.As with all of Le Guin’s books, her style of prose even in non-fiction flows so smoothly that it makes the whole thing remarkably easy-reading. And she even includes a glossary of grammatical terms at the back just in case we get stuck (I didn’t think I’d need it at all, but towards the end I certainly did, and I was grateful it was there). Best of all, I think, is that Steering the Craft is absolutely designed as a longer term study book, rather than a reference to dip in and out of. Another thing is that by no means is this a “how to write like Ursula K. Le Guin” book. Everything is carefully chosen to challenge a writer’s own creativity, rather than imposing a certain style. I’m looking forward to going back through it and trying out some of the exercises. Hopefully it’ll improve my writing and understanding of the craft a great deal.If you’re looking to go deeper with your own writing, I would absolutely recommend Steering the Craft. I’ve seen some people criticising the book for being a study guide, which I find a bit strange, because it’s very clearly marketed as such. It requires interactivity from the reader in order to be most useful as a resource. Although, there are plenty of passages of explanation and advice from Le Guin around the exercises and examples, such that you can indeed read it passively and still learn something.

I've read lots of books about the art and craft of writing, and this is definitely one of the best. I've been working my way through it quite slowly. IT's so full of good advices and wisdom, you have to digest it, so I have been taking it slow. It's text she's taken from writing classes she has run over the years, and reading it has made me wish I could have been in one of her groups. I bet they were good! Ursula K Le Guin is such a wonderful, intelligent, humane, writer, and this book reflects all those qualities, as well as her massive breadth of knowledge of literature and her depth of understanding and insight. Now I have finished, I will go back and work through it again, do the exercises again. I'm looking forward to seeing all the different things that come up!

This is a highly entertaining and practical book on writing.Many of the ideas and exercises would be of value to writers of all genres, even to writers of non-fiction.Written with salty and vigorous sense of humour.Excellent!

I try to make a habit these days of writing a review of every book I read as soon as I can after I complete it, but reviewing "Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story" by Ursula K Le Guin was always going to be a hard job. It's a book about how to write by one of the best authors of our time, and I only play at being a writer in my spare time.This week's sad news of the death of its author makes my review of this little book even more daunting. Where even to start?Ursula K Le Guin wrote so many excellent books that have entertained and informed me. They taught me about story, they influenced my writing style, and they showed me aspects of thought and politics in that ever-so-subtle way of dropping details into plots that was one her trademarks.So, with this background I started to read "Steering the Craft". And I did not like it! Here was a successful and respected author telling me with the lightest of touches that I should practice my writing, hone my skills, and pay more attention to what I do. And she put exercises at the end of each chapter. And she illustrated her points with extracts from famous (although typically long-dead) authors. It was really too much!Surely you don't teach advanced aeronautics to a hawk. You don't explain gliding, swooping, and hovering to a magnificent bird of prey. But I am not a hawk; I am not even a pigeon; to be quite honest with you, I can't actually fly. That I spend some time in the air is probably only thanks to having climbed a particularly tall tree with a fine view, or perhaps I am like Amélie Nothomb in "Fear and Trembling" looking out from the window high above Tokyo and imagining myself flying.And it took a while for me to come round to Le Guin's tutelage. But, at the end of the second chapter she said: "Writing a sentence that expresses what you want to say isn't any easier than plumbing or fiddling. It takes craft." And I started to get the point.But I am a slow learner. Those things that I flatter myself I already do passably well seemed like needless inclusions, while those things that are beyond me appeared to be irrelevant and frustrating.The single thing that resonated most was the metaphor of the story as a magic craft. You don't have to lean into the tiller and plot a detailed course; you can simply step aboard and lightly help the boat follow the path along which it already wants to sail. This is both a comfort and a challenge! It is nice to know that as writers we can relax a little and let the story take charge, but it is also disconcerting to be told that we still need to learn the skills of seamanship.But anyway, the image of the magic boat adrift in the sea of story so resonated with my image of Ged aboard Lookfar sailing the West Reach in Earthsea that I was quite won over and started to pay attention.Maybe I would have liked to see more encouragement to read. Of course, Le Guin does provide examples and suggestions, and of course this book is about writing, but it is surprising (to me) how little and how narrowly many would-be authors read. Osmosis is a fine principal, and authors may subconsciously develop their style and their repertoire simply by watching and learning. On the whole I found the examples to be heavy and rather American in style (even when they are from British authors), but perhaps that is just personal taste.At the end of the day, however, I suspect this book is rather good at being what it sets out to be: a guide for groups or individuals who seriously want to work at understanding and improving their writing skills. I think it would work better as a workbook for a group of committed collaborators (what Le Guin calls "The Mutinous Crew") where there is a support organisation and peer pressure to do the exercises and provide critiquing feedback, than it does for an under-motivated individual ("The Lone Mariner"). Although I believe I have learned a lot from the book, I must confess that I have not attempted any of the exercises.

A wonderful book. It's probably not the best choice for someone starting out, but, as the author says herself in the introduction, if you already have some good writing experience, it's wonderful to help you improve your skills, get out of writer's block, or fix a problem in one of your texts by doing the various exercises. Great fun and really useful.

An excellent read and study guide. This is supplementing a creative writing course I have signed up for and is proving its worth already as I craft each new short story. A must for all creative writers!

Great advice from an independently-minded thinker and writer.

A wonderful book. Well written with a great many ideas and suggestions for improving ones writing craft.