Product Description

"My instructions to them were deliberately vague--they were to write about writing, any aspect or approach that caught their fancy. Leaving it open seemed to me to heighten the chances of getting the strongest and least predictable work. And so it was. They came at it from different angles, using different techniques, and each piece is unique. Perhaps the only common tacit assumption is that writing is difficult."-- From the Introduction by Frank Conroy

Since its inception in 1936, the Iowa Writers' Workshop has been perched atop the creative writing landscape, producing some of the greatest writers of the century. Though no one claims that writing can be taught--the Workshop itself professes no method--there is no disputing the success of the program and its celebrated attendees. Of the 20 Pulitzers awarded for fiction and poetry in the ‘90s, nine have gone to University of Iowa graduates.

For The Eleventh Draft, present-day director Frank Conroy invited 23 former professors and students of the Iowa Writers' Workshop to pen essays on their craft. As he hints in his Introduction, he was looking for an eclecticism, and The Eleventh Draft is nothing if not diverse. Some pieces are deeply personal; others might have been scripted for the first day of class. They are sometimes prescriptive, often contradictory, but always eloquent and provocative.

The Eleventh Draftis an invaluable resource for aspiring and established writers, for lovers of literature, and for anyone intrigued by the writing process or the Workshop itself. If you have doubts, open this anthology and, as Conroy advises, "Listen up."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #315677 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-01
• Released on: 1999-08-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Amazon.com Review
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

From Publishers Weekly
Pity the poor writer anthologized alongside Barry Hannah. There is much to commend in the 22 other contributions to this collection by writers who've taught at Iowa, including Margot Livesey, Francine Prose, James McPherson and Deborah Eisenberg. But few write such startling sentences as this whiplash-inducing hairpin turn from "Mr. Brain, He Want a Song," a meditation on the writing process: "Mr. Brain, he sick of sickness. He want a song, Jack. May I suggest that writing itself is freedom from consciousness as much as stimulant to it." Other highlights include Doris Grumbach's charming, if curmudgeonly, essays on her own beginnings as a writer and as a teacher, and grumblings about the publishing industry and celebrity authors: "It might help the level of prose if they would stop 'appearing' and performing and become the private persons their craft requires them to be." Scott Spencer expresses disappointment with his students' carefulness, their fear of embarrassing themselves. A writer unwilling to express potentially risky and humiliating and hurtful truths, he warns, "is finally no more effective than a firefighter who will not smash in windows." A few of these essays stray into dry, vague disquisitions on the act of writing, highlighting the shortcomings of any such book: the process of writing is nearly always less interesting than what the process produces. Still, a compelling account of a writer's thinking, such as Abraham Verghese's eloquent and heartfelt "Cowpaths," drawing elegant connections between his work as a physician and his work as a writer, is a fine addition to any canon of literature. Never pompous, never dull, he closes his essay with the plainest, most inarguable truth: "That is why I write: because I still find comfort in words, because I find safety in the structures one can build from words, and because it is only by writing that I discover exactly what it is I am thinking." (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
These complementary titles offer a range of writing from and about the influential Iowa Writers' Workshop, the first creative writing program in the country. Conroy, the current director of the workshop, asked former students and faculty to write about writing. Chris Offutt, supplying the title, writes that each of his stories results from "ten or eleven drafts over a two-year period." Physician Abraham Verghese notes that schools of medicine and writing both use the same aphorism: "God is in the details." Marilynne Robinson accepts a canon of literature that is regarded as a treasure by a population but objects to "treating such works as categorically different from anything we ourselves can aspire to." In The Workshop, Grimes, a novelist and graduate of the workshop, selected 43 stories, recollections, and essays by participants and organized them by decade. "The book," he writes, "can be read sequentially, as a narrative about the workshop" or as an anthology. Selections include pieces by Wallace Stegner (1930s), Jayne Anne Phillips (1970s), Ethan Canin (1980s), Charles D'Ambrosio (1990s), and many others. Both titles will be of interest to academic libraries, particularly those whose institutions support creative writing programs.ANancy Patterson Shires, East Carolina Univ., Greenville, NC
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A Worthwhile Read for Prose Writers
A compilation of essays from former students and teachers of the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop, editor Frank Conroy's book The Eleventh Draft attempts to capture the essence of the writer's life. "These essays," Conroy notes in the introduction, "are written by people who struggle with both the visible and invisible realities of language every day of their lives." Consequently, authors including Stuart Dybek, Elizabeth McCracken, and Barry Hannah reflect on the unique nature of their profession. The tone varies wildly; while authors such as William Lashner and Justin Cronin write in a deeply personal manner, Scott Spencer and James Alan McPherson give more detached, less introspective observations. This variance renders some essays less affecting than others, but most are engaging, thoughtful pieces. Despite such a lofty goal this book is an overall success, a testament to Conroy's faith in his selected writers (evidenced in his "deliberately vague" instructions for each contributing author) as well as the authors' individual talents. Those looking for pragmatic tips should look elsewhere. However, prose writers seeking both inspiration and insight should find this book both valuable and enjoyable.

Charming
Elizabeth McCracken, Stuart Dybek, and Tom Grimes deliver the best here (in my opinion), but the other essays are worth reading. There is throughout the book a shared love of writing--even at its most frustrating and formdible. The title, The Eleventh Draft, is a gentle nudge to the rest of us that God is in the revisions; that no one--not even the best (and these writers are good)--writes easily or quickly, and that the process of writing is just as meaningful as the result (even if nobody ever sees your 11th draft but you). :-)

The Writing Life
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.