Ecco
Review by Walter Cummins
When first reading A Long Game, I kept wondering who the book was written for. The title and the author would attract those of us who are writers, writing teachers, writing students, and would-be writers, possibly along with curious fiction readers, especially fans of McCracken’s novels and story collections. But these are just notes, thoughts that came to her in 280 numbered sections of a paragraph or two. This is not a how-to book, not a presentation of guidelines for creating stories or novels.
A number of those already exist, several written by people I know. Usually they are organized by the components of composing a work of fiction, like creating characters, plot, setting, etc. They identify the steps involved and provide instruction.
McCracken, instead, doesn’t offer steps of a systematic approach, just occasional recommendations about certain details, like avoiding adverbs, something recommended in my first class as an MFA student. Those of us who teach writing would nod agreement. It’s one of the few directives from student days that I remember.
Other than minor specifics like this, from the book’s beginning McCracken undermines whatever advice she gives: “As with any such book or craft talk or social media rant or workshop critique, a lot of it is hogwash. I’m talking to myself.”
Some topics of the book address McCracken as workshop teacher, describing her interactions with students, especially her approach to encouraging them to find their own way rather than telling them what that way should be: “I never want to be in the master cylinder of somebody else’s work, though I do want to help my students get to the master cylinder on their own.”
But more of the book is about her own processes of discovery and problem solving, what she goes through in coming up with a novel or story, including how she treats failure as with her unpublished works. What emerges in these 280 sections is much more confessional than craft-focused. In fact, she even reveals her uncertainties about a definition of craft: “I’m not sure what craft means when it comes to writing fiction.”
I’ve often tried to explain craft to fiction writing students and think I did. But it’s useful to have someone else suggest that I’ve been deluded. Was I really just talking to myself? McCracken is very aware of the possibility. That may be one explanation for the attraction of this book. Hers is an appealing and interesting voice. For writers it raises questions that we’ve been asking ourselves and also reminds us of questions we should be asking. For readers, it reveals how a writer—in this case a well-regarded one—confronts the processes of writing stories and novels, what it’s like in the creative trenches.
One reason she has trouble with the notion of craft is probably because she does not apply enumerated strategies when she is in the midst of writing. For her, it’s not a matter of rational problem-solving but a process she cannot articulate:
Something about my neurology causes the sensation: science can explain how I write, even if I can’t. Moments, even hours, of inspiration, when I understand things all at once that determined thought cannot uncover. My best work happens at a subconscious level; I discover what my characters want and where they are going simultaneous to the writing itself. My decisions are not conscious, even if I acknowledge that I must be the entity making them.
McCracken is not the only writer who relies on the inventiveness of the subconscious, sudden insights that may arrive in the shower or with fingers on a keyboard. Her explanation reveals why her approach to teaching writing is to help each student discover and develop the magic of his or her imagination.
