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The Eleventh Draft: Craft and the Writing Life from Iowa Writers' Workshop Hardcover – Bargain Price, August 25, 1999

by Frank Conroy (Author), Iowa Writers' Workshop (Author)

3.9 11 ratings

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For The Eleventh Draft, Frank Conroy solicited essays about writing from 23 fiction writers--all of them one-time Iowa Writers' Workshop students or faculty members. "My instructions to them," says Conroy, "were deliberately vague.... Leaving it open seemed to me to heighten the chances of getting the strongest and least predictable work." Conroy guessed right. Beyond the shared sentiment that writing is hard work, there is, blessedly, no common thread here. For T. Coraghessan Boyle, writing is an addiction as powerful as "putting a bottle to your lips or a spike in your arm." James Hynes claims that writing takes such a toll that "just writing this essay is probably as bad for me as a pack of cigarettes." And Barry Hannah describes writers as "not always the most vital people in the room, but often nearer ghouls sniffing at the trough of other living blood." In the book's most pessimistic piece, Doris Grumbach maligns word processors for destroying the richness of the English language, megabestsellers for the decimation of forests, and the notion of writer-as-celebrity (lionization, she says, does not advance one's writing). Most of this book's contributors aim, often by way of story, to get at the mysterious heart of the fiction writer's experience. Fred G. Leebron recalls the moment he realized that the characters take the author by the hand, and not vice versa. Elizabeth McCracken confesses to having no inner or outer life, but to stealing all her material from her family. And Scott Spencer underscores the courage needed to create fiction. "A writer who will not risk hurting someone's feelings," he says, "is finally no more effective than a firefighter who will not smash in windows." --Jane Steinberg

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0000WZWPG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Resource; First Edition (August 25, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.38 pounds

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Robert McCready

MFA Students -- The I-Ching of Awesome Fiction Writing

Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2015

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This book contains the best essay on writing I've ever read, and that is "Not Knowing" by Fred Leebron. The secret on how to compose the manuscript is here. As writers, a myriad of questions run rampant: Where should I start? Who's speaking? What point of view should I use? How am I supposed to write this? What am I supposed to write? The answer to all is to start writing before you know the answers to any. An awesome companion book would be "Ron Carlson Writes a Story." With Leebron's essay and Carlson's short book, the craft section on any writer's bookshelf will be awesome and more importantly, it will be complete. Sell your soul, sell your child, or cash in the extra points from your Amazon credit card and buy these books.

4 people found this helpful

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C. Felkins

Fantastic Experience

Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2009

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I am impressed with the professionalism provided to me by this seller. Joy's Books delivered a used book in almost perfect condition. It arrived when it was supposed to and looked better than expected. In addition, I asked Joy's Books to help me find a different book. While she was unable to provide me that book she provided me with suggestions as to where else I could try. I wish that everyone I work with professionally held themselves to the same level that Joy's Books does. YAY JOY'S BOOKS!!!!

2 people found this helpful

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gentlebetsy

One Star

Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2016

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It told nothing.

One person found this helpful

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Timothy J. Bazzett

Uneven collection, but with several very readable pieces. Grumbach is great, as always.

Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2015

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This book was published in 1999, and I see that there are a hundred LibraryThing members that have the book, but not a single review has been posted. Well here's one. To tell the truth it's a pretty uneven collection. Of the 23 pieces contained here, I found only a half dozen or so to be truly engaging. I bought the book mainly because I saw it had an essay by Doris Grumbach, who is one of my favorite non-fiction writers. (She is now 97, mostly deaf and partly blind, and continues to write. See why I like her?) And yup, her essay is probably my favorite of the whole bunch. A known curmudgeony sort, Doris stayed in character here, noting: "What good writing does not require is public appearances, lavish cocktail book parties, awards, interviews, lectures, readings, signings, and all the peripheral goings-on and hype ... It might help the level of their prose if they would stop "appearing" and performing and become the private persons their craft requires them to be." Well said, Doris.

Geoffrey Wolff very eloquently describes his own mixed feelings about the proliferation of MFA programs, despite the fact that he heads one himself. (I loved Wolff's memoir about his father, THE DUKE OF DECEPTION.)

T. Coraghessan Boyle holds forth most charmingly about his misspent, drug-addled youth and how writing saved him, giving much credit to various teachers, especially Vance Bourjaily, his mentor at the IWW.

Elizabeth McCracken confesses that most of her fiction comes from family archives, stories and papers. (Her THE GIANT'S HOUSE is a favorite of mine.)

There is a quote in James Alan McPherson's piece, "Workshopping Lucius Mummius," that I especially liked. I can't remember who said it, Marilynne Robinson or someone writing for Chronicles of Culture, but it seemed still very relevant, considering the current GOP circus, starring Donald Trump. Here it is -

"Every day, American life becomes ... more and more like scenes from Petronius' SATYRICON, where sex substitutes for love, profits for productivity. Petronius lived in the time of the Emperor Nero, when the Romans no longer voted for their consuls, but were content to worship whatever buffoon had been selected to be the god-man who ruled the world's only remaining super-power ..."

After Grumbach, the piece I think I felt was most effective was the title piece by Chris Offutt, who probably gives as good a description of the writing and editing process and the compulsion to write as I've yet read. I loved his first memoir, THE SAME RIVER TWICE. Now I know I've got to read the other one - and he has a new one, about his father, coming out early next year. That one too, yeah.

This collection was, to my mind, just okay. Well, okay; maybe even a little more than okay, okay? But it fails to unseat what I call the best IWW book I've read so far, which is A COMMUNITY OF WRITERS, edited by Robert Dana. The essays in that book were all good. To this one? Three and a half stars. Okay?

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

3 people found this helpful

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gayle bard

If you love essays……..

Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2013

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I've had this book for years, returning to it time and again for the sheer pleasure of reading finely crafted essays. I wanted to give it as a gift to a close friend, and, as luck would have it, found a new copy on Amazon. If you love the essay form, this collection on various subjects by various authors selected by Frank Conroy will become a favorite.

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Amazon Customer

great condition, love it

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2014

very prompt, great condition, love it!!!

Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2009

I got this book because I'm a T.C. Boyle fan and wanted to know about his background.

However, I find myself drawn to a very amusing piece from writer William Lashner, who vividly portrays the difference from the writer's life he expected and the one he actually lives.

We meet him in his first "run" at sport fishing: "...my muscles ripping off the elbow, my feet slipping in the blood, my seasick patch shaking loose. Through it all one thought kept hammering at my skull: Hemingway was a jerk."

It builds from there as he shares his path to the Iowa Writers Workshop:

"So I'm sitting home, alone, watching reruns of "F-Troop," when a voice comes out of my television and asks if I'm desperate for a change. Of course I am desperate for a change. Who watching reruns of "F-Troop" isn't desperate for a change?"

He takes us into his experience with the page and how it transforms over time. He discoveres that once he's abut 100 pages into writing a novel, something changes. That's when the novel's voice takes over. "I have to slog a bit, waiting for the manuscript to start whispering in my ear."

"When I start, it is an act of faith, hoping it will come, not certain that it will but certain that if I don't begin it won't ever....it brings with it not merely its own voice but an entire world, the world of my fiction."

Lashner had expected summers on Sidney Sheldon's yacht, great applause, cruise wear. And what he got was a relationship.

"I haven't given up all aspirations to the glorious fun I had lusted for as a boy. I remember reading how Fitzgerald and Faulkner prostituted themselves to Hollywood and my first thought was, 'How about me?'"

This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.

8 people found this helpful

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knucklehead

Congratulations, all of you, on your fine, fine...

Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2003

A toast! Tenure all around. Bravo, marvellous. All of you--really. Really, truly marvelous. So many insights. You've got Paris on the Iowa River out there, you really do. A round table to make King Arthur proud. A real Salon--Kantian style. Brilliant, on every possible level. So true, everything was so true; and so well-said, from start to finish. Not a word out of place. Ideal. Perfection! Stupendous! I can't rave enough. Tenure for everyone! On me!

6 people found this helpful

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The Eleventh Draft: Craft and the Writing Life from Iowa Writers' Workshop Hardcover – Bargain Price, August 25, 1999

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