We made it to lesson 7 before stalling out, and I decided to finish reading the book solo without continuing the exercises. I actually started working through this book with a small writing group.

The goal, according to the author, is to help you develop skills that free you to write want you to write.Or as Le Guin puts it so that you’re “ready to let the story tell itself having the skills, knowing the craft so that when the magic boat comes by, you can step into it and guide it where it wants to go, where it ought to go.” Read more

This slim volume has profound insights on writing and presents them with grace, charm an wit. I particularly benefitted from one called A Terrible Thing to Do that involved writing a narrative of about 500 words and then cutting it by half still keeping the narrative clear and not replacing specifics by generalities.The book also includes the best advice I’ve read on running peer group writing workshops. Steering the Craft is primarily a workbook with “exercise consciousness-raisers that aim to clarify and intensify your awareness of certain elements of prose writing and certain techniques and modes of storytelling.'These exercises are challenging but illuminating. Indirection narration or what tells including avoiding expository lumps is discussed in depth.There’s an excellent chapter entitled Crowding and Leaping which involves the necessity of focusing on some areas while leaping ahead in other parts while still following a fixed trajectory. For example, she asks you to listen to the sound of your writing which involves diction and syntax.Sophisticated consideration is given to verbs: person and tense, as well as point of view and changing point of view. What it does concentrate on are those problems that challenge writers and impede the tone an flow of the narrative. Profound insights on writing presented with grace, charm and wit.Ursula Le Guin describes Steering the Craft, A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, as “A handbook for storytellers - writers of narrative prose and not for beginners.”Indeed, it is not a book for beginners as much of what she addresses would be beyond the comprehension of novices.

Steering the craft by ursula k le guin