From Charles Johnson--a National Book Award winner, Professor Emeritus
at University of Washington, and one of America's preeminent scholars on
literature and race--comes an instructive, inspiring guide to the craft
and art of writing.
An award-winning novelist, philosopher, essayist, screenwriter,
professor, and cartoonist, Charles Johnson has devoted his life to
creative pursuit. His 1990 National Book Award-winning novel Middle
Passage is a modern classic, revered as much for its daring plot as its
philosophical underpinnings. For thirty-three years, Johnson taught and
mentored students in the art and craft of creative writing. The Way of
the Writer is his record of those years, and the coda to a
kaleidoscopic, boundary-shattering career.
Organized into six accessible, easy-to-navigate sections, The Way of
the Writer is both a literary reflection on the creative impulse and a
utilitarian guide to the writing process. Johnson shares his lessons and
exercises from the classroom, starting with word choice, sentence
structure, and narrative voice, and delving into the mechanics of scene,
dialogue, plot and storytelling before exploring the larger questions at
stake for the serious writer. What separates literature from industrial
fiction? What lies at the heart of the creative impulse? How does one
navigate the literary world? And how are philosophy and fiction
concomitant?
Luminous, inspiring, and imminently accessible, The Way of the Writer
is a revelatory glimpse into the mind of the writer and an essential
guide for anyone with a story to tell.
