2 fiction writers offer different approaches in how-to guides to writing

• Two new books by fiction writers Elizabeth McCracken and Sue Monk Kidd offer different approaches to the craft of writing.
• McCracken's "A Long Game" is skeptical of cosmic inspiration, focusing instead on practical advice and personal experience.
• Kidd's "Writing Creativity and Soul" encourages writers to connect with the supernatural and spiritual for authenticity.

Elizabeth McCracken ends her new book on the craft of writing with what she describes as the mantra of all writers: “I am a genius with much to learn.”

Indeed, this claim describes both her stance toward writing as well as what she expects from those who wish to learn about writing from her.

“A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction”consists of 280 entries, some a sentence or two, some several paragraphs or even pages long, in which McCracken draws on her careers as both a successfully published writer and teacher of writing to write a book that “dispenses advice, composed by a writer of fiction.”

McCracken notes how much she has previously distrusted the entire concept of books on the craft of writing, or even the notion of rules for writing at all. She explains, “Everything that I have ever believed was true and immutable about my work has changed. Only the obsessions remain.” What follows are thoughtful, encouraging insights from her own experiences writing as well as her experiences reading and responding to years of student writing.

As an aspiring fiction writer myself, there is much that I appreciated in this book. At times, it fit the generic conventions that McCracken set out early on a bit snarkily: “chipper, cheerleaderish, generally with an encouraging second-person narrator meant to make the whole exhausting process of writing a book seem possible. 'You can do it!'”

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