Revisionaries: What We Can Learn from the Lost, Unfinished, and Just Plain Bad Work of Great Writers

This enlightening guide from novelist Jansma (Our Narrow Hiding Places) draws lessons on writing from the abandoned or incomplete projects of literary legends. Describing how drafts of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished final novel, The Last Tycoon, are marred by plot holes and random toggling between first- and third-person viewpoints, Jansma urges readers not to get discouraged by their own sloppy early drafts. It’s okay if projects don’t work out, he argues, noting that Jane Austen gave up on her novel The Watsons after deciding she wasn’t doing justice to its working-class protagonist. There’s some repetition between entries, with studies of false starts made by Louisa May Alcott, Octavia Butler, and Flannery O’Connor all boiling down to exhortations to remain resilient in the face of dissatisfaction with one’s work. Still, exercises inspired by the featured writers are creative and original. For instance, Jansma explains how Ralph Ellison wrote expansive manuscripts he later whittled down and suggests that readers might create their own sprawling first draft by writing a one-page plot summary for one’s novel, expanding each sentence into its own page, and then repeating the second step. Aspiring novelists will be heartened. Agent: Doug Stewart, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Oct.)