I requested this NetGalley ARC to improve my critical reading skills as a way to boost creativity in my writing. The author, Erin M. Pushman, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at Limestone College, USA, truly knows her stuff.

What I found was an advanced placement class in a book. HOW TO READ LIKE A WRITER provides ten detailed steps with readings and related creative exercises in such areas as plot, genre, character development, language, structure, and settings.

Authors who thrive under didactic teachings with a lot of structure will love this book and learn so much. I personally opt for a looser style à la Natalie Goldberg in WRITING DOWN THE BONES, but I suspect I'm an outlier. As the French say, "À chacun son goût!" Out January 13.

Thanks to the author, Bloomsbury Academic, and NetGalley for the digital ARC; opinions are mine.

#howtoreadlikeawriter #NetGalley

It’s quite a bold move to name your book ‘How to Read Like a Writer’ because it automatically invites comparison with (for my money) one of the best creative writing manuals out there: Francine Prose’s ‘Reading Like a Writer’. The bad news is that Erin Pushman’s book never manages to approach the heights of Prose’s seminal work.
Not that that means it’s not a useful book in and of itself and much of the advice it offers is extremely sound, if rather on the basic side. It definitely wins points for extending itself solely beyond the novel and short story, as a great many how-to books tend to, and offers some advice on poetry, graphic novels and creative nonfiction, genres which still get rather overlooked in this market. The book is also to be commended for the quality of some of its exercises, particularly the ones that focus on revision and editing — again an aspect that is often ignored, although this book does lag a little behind Browne and King’s ‘Self-Editing For Fiction Writers’ (another work that should find its way onto every creative writer’s desk).
The problem (if it is a problem) is that Pushman’s advice is rather on the generic side and really no different than you would find in any other basic writing manual (or even free online these days) and little of it is certainly as insightful or considered as similar works by Prose, or those by Stephen King, James Woods, John Gardener or Margaret Atwood.
A secondary issue is that the title promises at least some consideration of the skills and techniques required in close reading and its efforts in this regard are rather half-hearted, particularly in comparision with Prose. Part of the problem here is that Pushman operates from a rather limited set of examples, many of which appear to be work by her students. Giving lesser-known writers such exposure is, of course, laudable (not to mention no doubt cheaper in terms of permission fees) but the problem is that the quality of these examples is variable and only a couple of them have the depth and strength to withstand anything other than rather cursory readings. (It’s not that these writers are bad. They’re not. Often they show incredible amounts of promise. But it’s not yet work that’s suitable for providing clear and concise examples for learning writers to follow.)
If this were your first writing manual, then there’s no doubt that it would do the job nicely of setting you on your creative path before you found yourself needing to move on to deeper and more involved works.

This book is reminiscent of Eng Lit lectures combined with creative writing. It’s an excellent and thought provoking read for anyone hoping to develop their writing skills.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Bloomsbury Academic for an advanced copy of this new writing and literature reference book.

Every writer in interviews, or their memoirs, or in how-to-guides or even on podcasts will always stress one piece of advice. Read, read, and read some more. Read everything around, read current and read older works. The biggest problem with this advice is that many of these writers never tell you how. How to read, and what to look for when reading everything including the cereal box, as one author once said. Erin M. Pushman in the book How to Read Like a Writer: 10 Lessons to Elevate Your Reading and Writing Practice through example and instruction teaches the reader what to look for and what reading others can teach the burgeoning writer.

The book is not the person who buys one issue of Writer's Digest and hopes for bestsellerdom. This is more for professional writers, or those with a draft or two in a drawer somewhere, and want to take their writing to the next level. How to improve your craft by observing what other artists have accomplished, how to identify good writing, an develope critical skills that carry over into the readers works.

The books is broken into ten lessons, dialogue, developing characters, structure, and so on, with paired readings from across genres. The examples are interesting in that they are much newer and different than what is shown in schools, and seem quite apt for the lessons of the chapter. Also the inclusion of photo essays and graphic storytelling are nice to see as sequential art stories, and stories based on and needing photos or art usually get short shift in many books.

Some of the author's writing and also some of the examples can get quite heady. I don't mean this as a slight. Many might come into the book thinking that it is similar to Francine Prose's books, but this more intensive book, with a lot more instruction and a classroom feel to it. The examples and lessons ask a lot, but the end result will help many new authors reach their writing potential.

Hmm how to sum up this book? If you are an avid reader who is toying with the idea of writing, you may find this book intimidating at first.

There are some extremely helpful parts to the book - the excerpts of text, the exercises at the end of chapters, the diagrams illustrating the theme of the lesson - but in between all of this there is a lot of detail and at times I found it off putting and alienating. No doubt there is a wealth of useful information in the book and sections which you will refer to time and time again. However, I can’t say I would recommend it as the first book you read on the subject. Read around first in more accessible books on the topic and then come back to this book for an extra layer of knowledge.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to review an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest opinion.

Like most readers I have always held a desire to write a novel. To see my name on the spine of a book in Waterstones (other bookshops are available) and to know the joy of unboxing your own written work. Alas, I do not have the discipline. I chose to read this book because it seemed like a perfect way to get started. However, I had to add the book to my DNF pile. I just wasn’t feeling it. I felt it was too heavy.

When I started to review this title I saw that it was released under Bloomsbury Academic which goes someway to explaining my feelings towards it. I feel like I wanted something that would make the act of writing a little more fun but straight away I was thrown into a book that came with homework which I don't think I was expecting.

Sadly, A DNF for me.

How To Read Like a Writer - 10 Lessons to Elevate Your Reading and Writing Practice by Erin M Pushman is available now.

For more information regarding Bloomsbury Academic (@BloomsburyAcad) please visit www.bloomsbury,com/uk/academic/.

Erin M. Pushman, How to Read Like a Writer 10 Lessons to Elevate Your Reading and Writing Practice, Bloomsbury Academic 2022

Thank you, NetGalley and Bloomsbury Academic, for providing me with this uncorrected proof in exchange for an honest review.

As Erin Pushman suggests, reading to become a better writer is a useful process. However, it has its downside for Pushman and her book. I could not help but read it using the process she advocates -reading it as a potential writer of a similar narrative. That is, a narrative which is aimed at producing writers who, using what they have read, improve their own writing. Starting from this premise, I could not help but compare How to Read Like a Writer with similar information books, with the underlying question to myself – how would I write this book? How could it better achieve its purpose? Having read numerous books about scriptwriting, and some about writing short stories, while I feel that Pushman has much to offer, I have some concerns about the ability of the work to stand alone as an instructive writing text. I would have preferred clear short statements and observations to the somewhat ‘wordy’ narrative.

Pushman’s ten lessons use examples from poetry, prose, and the graphic novel. These examples are part of the narrative, often repeated as they are used the writing methods of genre (including hybrids and multi genres); short forms and digital media; narrative, plot, theme, emotion and concept; structure; language; characterisation; point of view; setting; and scene. The lessons appear at the end of each chapter, arising from the examples, discussion and craft to be learnt through the work described in the chapter. There are some instructive graphics, complete with excellent descriptions and explanations. The works, or portions that have been used in the instructive chapters, are at the end of the book, with clear references to where they previously appeared as part of the learning process. There is a useful index.

A positive aspect of this book is the freshness and creativity of the examples. They provide some excitingly different approaches to writing. The reader who is doing so with the aim of improving their writing is provided with the tools to work beyond the familiar, an achievement that will give the adventuresome writer some material well worth considering. On the downside, I felt that there was too little attention given to more familiar works, to the craft of writing a good story, to some of the (perhaps) more conservative ways of reading with the aim of achieving an improvement in writing style.

How to Read Like a Writer 10 Lessons to Elevate Your Reading and Writing Practice would make a useful adjunct to a section of your library (or that of a teacher of writing) dedicated to understanding the value of your reading to the challenge of writing.

Extremely thorough and even difficult book that allowed me to understand a lot about the books I read, despite the fact that I then have no intention of writing any of them. The author deals systematically with the world of literature starting from the various genres, and then arriving at the different and possible developments. There are also plenty of prompts for creative writing.

Libro estremamente accurato e anche difficile, che mi ha permesso di capire molto dei libri che leggo, nonostante poi io non abbia intenzione di scriverne nessuno. L'autrice affronta in modo sistematico il mondo della letteratura partendo dai vari generi, per arrivare poi ai differenti e possibili svolgimenti. Ci sono anche tantissimi prompt per la scrittura creativa.

I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

The first step to becoming a successful writer is to become a successful reader. Helping you develop your critical skills How to Read Like a Writer is an accessible and effective step-by-step guide to how careful reading can help you improve your craft as a creative writer, whatever genre you are writing in.

Across 10 lessons – each pairing published readings with practical critical and creative exercises – this book helps writers master such key elements of their craft