From Booklist

A writer and seasoned creative-writing teacher, LaPlante has assembled a treasury of materials to back up her literary expertise. In her discussion of metaphor, for example, LaPlante quotes Byron, Denis Johnson, Flannery O’Connor, Shakespeare, and William Gass. In her extrapolation of the old adage, “write about what you know,” she presents a poem by Sharon Olds, a page from the journals of Leonard Michaels, and Eudora Welty’s indelible advice: “Write about what you don’t know about what you know.” Comprehensive in its coverage of inspiration, craft, aesthetics, veracity, and purpose, this one-stop guide to writing is casual in tone and rigorous in content, elucidating the nature of fiction and nonfiction and clarifying the qualities unique to each and common to both. Each chapter contains an explication of such subjects as point of view, creating characters, and narrative structure; writing exercises, and an illustrative story by the likes of Tim O’Brien, (more…)