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How to Write a Novel - Grant Richards - 1901
This book was written in 1901 and somehow managed to follow me via a direct family connection. My great grandfather gave it to my grandmother in Paris on July 5, 1902. His signed dedication "from Papa" is opposite the title page. The book is part of the "How to Series" which included How to Deal with your Banker, Where and How to Dine in Paris, How to Choose your Banker, and How to Invest and How to Speculate.
It is extraordinary how much of the content of the book parallels the advice provided by today's professional writing coaches. There are sections on "How to Begin", "Characters and Characterization", "Pitfalls", and illustrations of "How Authors Work". There is even an Appendix essay by Edgar Allan Poe on "The philosophy of composition".
Although the references and authors mentioned are somewhat out of date, there is a lot of remarkably pertinent information in the 171 pages of this book. In his final chapter on Success he has words of useful wisdom: "Spare yourself many disappointments by putting your literary efforts before a competent critic, and let him point out the crudities, the digressions, and those weaknesses which betray the 'prentice hand.' It will not be pleasant to see a pen line through your 'glorious' passages, or two blue pencil marks across a favorite piece of dialogue, but it is better to know your defects at once than to discover them by painful and constant rejections."
He also advised that you should be "willing to learn; have not fear of hard work; do the best and write the best that is in you; and never ape anybody, but be yourself."
My grandmother never wrote a novel, but it is telling that my great grandfather thought she could. I guess I'm trying to fill that novelist role for her.
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William Shurcliff: The Northeast Solar Energy Association (NESEA) had a chapter here in Massachusetts that had monthly meetings at MIT that Dr. Shurcliff attended. I had the distinct honor to meet him there as I was just starting to think about solar heating. He had worked on the Manhattan Project (the atomic bomb). He worked for Polaroid and he played an outspoken role in defeating plans for a supersonic passenger plane in order to prevent SST's from flying over populated areas. And then in the 1970's he became an advocate for passive solar building design and superinsulation. He wrote numerous books on the subject including a seminal book on air to air heat exchangers.
