Draft No. 4

I'm a fiction writer, but I still learned a lot from McPhee's essays about writing nonfiction. He's a great writer, and his insights are valuable to anyone who writes.

John McPhee shares his path to becoming a writer in this combination memoir/how-to-write book. I took lots of notes from this book, which I'll note here, but if you have interest in writing you probably need to read the book yourself (it's just 200 pages).

In high school, McPhee's teacher had the class write three pieces a week. The writing could be about anything, but each composition had to be accompanied by a structural outline, “...anything from Roman numerals I, II, III to a looping doodle with guiding arrows and stick figures.” McPhee always does extensive research before beginning his work, and he starts with a “...blueprint before working it out in sentences and paragraphs.” I loved how his teacher “...made no attempt to stop anybody from booing, hissing, or wadding paper and throwing it at the reader, all of which kids did.” Immersion in fire. McPhee goes on to say, “The approach to structure in factual writing is like returning from a grocery store with materials you intend to cook for dinner. You set them out on the kitchen counter, and what's there is what you deal with, and all you deal with.”

The real truth about how McPhee became such a great writer is that he worked closely with great writers. When he was just beginning to write, he asked his editor at the New Yorker how he could afford to spend so much time with him on a piece when he had so many other responsibilities, and William Shawn replied, “It takes as long as it takes.”

I think it's the hard work of the first draft and the fear of the rewriting that kills the desire of many to write. McPhee has found that there is always a four-to-one ration in writing time, of the time it takes to write the first draft versus the other drafts combined. Getting down that first draft is incredibly difficult, he says. “For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something—anything—out in front of me. Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something—anything—as a first draft.”

And finally, McPhee concludes his book with a story about omission in writing. As a nineteen-year-old, he made an unexpected visit to the art studio of Dwight Eisenhower. He was left alone with Eisenhower, and was having an awkward conversation with the former president about a still life the general was painting of fruit on a tablecloth. “Despite the painting's advanced stage, it did not include the grapes. I said, ‘Why have you left out the grapes?' Ike said, ‘Because they're too g-d-ed hard to paint.'“

This book is for plotters and non-fiction writers, authors of wilderness and science.

On any given page, the author writes about things like the daughter of his daughter Laura, the nuclei most prone to fission, and the Japanese name for explosive balloons that shut down the Hanford nuclear plant. His writing is drowning in facts.

If you are also one of these writers, you'll like this book.