Book review: Words fail me by Patricia O'Conner

O'Conner believes there is no mystery to write well and "it is a skill that just about anyone can learn, more craft than art." So the purpose of Words fail me is to teach the craft--it is "about techniques for making poor writing presentable and good writing even better." It is a "user's manual for words".

The author even arranged the book as if she had written a manual. 30 topics/writing techniques were broken into three categories: Put yourself together, The fundamental things apply and Getting better all the time. In the first category she talked about the big picture such as getting to know your subject and audience before writing. Then she moved on to "the fundamental" topics, e.g. the importance of using of verbs. Last she covered 10 topics on how to turn OK writing into good writing.

The advantage of this manual type of arrangement is that a reader doesn't have to sweat in remembering the story told in early chapters. Each topic is by itself a short story and you don't have to read story one to appreciated story 30. Also you can read one or five topics depending on how much time you have, or how sleepy you are (in my case). The downside of this arrangement though, is that you don't feel like learning much after finally finished reading topic 30 a month later--you probably forgot what topic one said.

Oh well, I guess a manual is something you are supposed to go back to after all. For now all I need to know is what the potential problems could be and where to look if I have a problem later. At least the book is full of witty jokes that you don't normally see in a real manual.

Apart from her good sense of humor I enjoyed reading the topics in her last category most. Talking more about art than craft of writing, this part makes the book fundamentally different from a grammar book. For example, one topic talked about making and keeping promises, which function as "glue, gripping the reader's attention by holding a long piece of writing together". If you start your story by "this is the funniest thing I have ever heard", then the readers will feel obligated to find out what is so funny.

The funny part of the book though is it doesn't have such a glue. O'Conner's joke is the only thing I can think of. She should be pound of her achievement as the most humorous manual, I think. She did promise "a manual for words", and I think she achieved that goal as well.