Writing: An Informal, Anecdotal Guide to the Secrets of Crafting and Selling Non-fiction

Description

224 pages
$14.95
ISBN 0-7710-8794-2
DDC 808'

Year

1987

Contributor

Reviewed by Robert Seiler

Robert Seiler was Assistant Professor of General Studies at the University of Calgary.

Review

Adrian Waller began writing professionally in the late 1950s. He served his apprenticeship in Sheerness, where he wrote obituaries and legal reports for the Sheerness Times-Guardian, and he establishes his reputation as a freelance writer in London, where he wrote feature stories for big newspapers and mass circulation magazines. In 1963 Waller emigrated to Canada. Over the years he has worked for a variety of newspapers, including the Montreal Gazette and the Toronto Globe and Mail, and magazines. He is now a self-employed writer and lecturer, with nearly 400 articles in magazines like Chatelaine, Reader’s Digest, and Weekend, and six books, including Theatre on a Shoestring (1972) and Adrian Wailer’s Guide to Music (1973) to his name. Waller’s great passion for writing as well as his genuine delight in sharing his insight into the problems that inhibit beginners and accomplished writers make Writing! an informative and entertaining guide to writing and selling non-fiction in Canada.

Waller has met hundreds of enthusiastic freelance writers who want to write but who worry about the wrong things in the wrong order. These writers agonize over copyrighting their work long before they have ever written a word, they select ideas that are beyond their capabilities, and they toil blindly on a manuscript hoping that when it is finished it might sell. All too often they are overwhelmed by the task of researching their topic, intimidated by setting out their information for all to see, bemused by recycling ideas, and ignorant of the market. “The tragedy is that many are imaginative, perceptive, and resourceful people who have understood little about the kind of equipment a serious writer needs for the long journey, or even the measured steps that must be taken to enter the business as a professional. They have never been shown the way.”

Waller attempts to “show the way” in Writing! The “chronological system” he explains here, which starts with the well-prepared proposal and ends with the highly polished final draft, adheres to the standards required by the top magazines. The simple assumption is that a writer who can consistently write good articles for the top magazines can satisfy all good houses. To complete the picture, Waller includes the counsel of scores of colleagues, editors, professors, publishers, and writers, who share their expertise.

In chapters 1 to 4 Waller establishes the context for his guided tour. He describes the nature of writing, what the freelance writer needs to enter it, how to get started, and what quality magazines expect. Here he explains the multifaceted character of the magazine piece, what makes it work, and what makes it fail. This material is put into perspective in the chapters dealing with searching out ideas, refining them, and proposing them — the most important piece of writing the freelance writer ever undertakes.

Then, in chapters 5 to 7, he concentrates on digging up information and interviewing, primarily for biographies. To demonstrate how a writer must control and interview, Waller reprints portions of recorded interviews he has had with such celebrities as Paul Anka, Wilf Carter, and Luciano Pavarotti. The idea is that what goes into an interview is best shown by actually inviting the reader to sit in on a couple.

Waller next focuses on constructing the article and the book. These chapters are motivated by the observation that people write badly because they cannot organize the facts and ideas logically or pick out the simplest, clearest words to make themselves understood. Waller cites examples, again from his own work, which show how stories can be structured.

The least convincing chapters are chapters 11 to 13, where Waller deals with such topics as the elements of style, writer’s block, and polishing the final draft. Waller’s narrative loses much of its vigor in this section.

In the final chapters, Waller talks about such matters as editors and what they expect from a freelance writer, the anatomy of libel, recycling ideas and developing good working routines, crafting the speech, and the freelancer’s market. He concludes this section with lists of organizations and books for writers.

This guide compares favorably with the classics in the field, including Clarence A. Schoenfeld’s Effective Feature Writing (1960), Hayes B. Jacob’s A Complete Guide to Writing and Selling Non-Fiction (1967), and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well (1976). The usual complaint, however, is that the lessons conveyed in these texts have become thin as a result of frequent repetition. One of the great strengths of Writing! is the balance Waller achieves between rule and example. He not only explains effective writing and selling techniques, but he shows them in his own work. This approach results in a how-to book that is unusually accessible. My major reservation is that Waller’s preoccupation with “crafting” stories suggests that form is more important than content.

 

Citation

Waller, Adrian, “Writing: An Informal, Anecdotal Guide to the Secrets of Crafting and Selling Non-fiction,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed December 3, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/34313.