A lovely little craft book—more basic than it purports to be, but full of excellent general advice, almost all of which I happen to agree with. Good examples of the facets of writing Leguin is describing are particularly useful—I did not read all of them in full, but I think demonstration of the point is a wonderful pedagogical method, and I will certainly return to them when I am working on certain skills.

I took most away from the chapters on rhythm, voice, and narration. These are the things that most interest me about writing craft these days, are the things I am most working on. She also has some interesting things to say about exposition. A shortcoming of this book is that, despite plentiful exercises to practice the points in each chapter, there is little practically applicable direct advice. This is a deliberate and wise attempt to avoid prescriptivist advice, but the trouble is that practicing spreading out exposition throughout a story is obviously what genre writers are, generally speaking, trying to do but are simply not very good at. Much of the advice in the book is to learn to do things by doing them, which is exactly the right way to give writing advice and extremely unhelpful. I highlighted a great deal and will return to this in times of true writing turmoil, but it is unlikely to be a guide I return to day to day.