Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know about Writing

Rating:
Summary: Not as helpful as her "Woe Is I"
Review: After reading Patricia T. O'Conner's grammar book "Woe Is I," I was looking forward to reading what she has to say about the craft of writing. What I found was underwhelming.

"Words Fail Me" is the author's atempt to distill many years of writing in the newspaper realms into a manageable book for would-be writers. Her wit, charm, and way around a pun makes this smooth, fun reading. Tackling issues like writer's block, grammar, writing humor, smoothing out word order in sentences, and more, O'Conner gives us a handy book that nails all the basics.

But therein lies the problem: the book is too basic. There are dozens of books on the market that mine this same territory, a few better, most worse. While "Words Fail Me" is well-written and informative, it simply does not go into the level of detail that will help writers rise above the mundane. Nor does the author dish the dirt that writers need to know to get their work published. It would seem to me with her outstanding experience that O'Conner would do a better job with the "deep knowledge" she possesses about publishing as an industry. While this may be another book that she has in her, any book like "Words Fail Me" has to do a better job of helping writers distinguish themselves from the vast pool of writing talent. Millions are writers, but how do you take the craft to the level needed to stand out from the crowd? You won't be any closer to grasping this after reading this book. And that's too bad.

If you can write a decent sentence, you won't need "Words Fail Me." Sol Stein's "Stein on Writing" is an excellent next step instead, that author providing the inside knowledge sadly missing from O'Conner's book. The only thing unique about "Words Fail Me" is the fact that it may be the only book of its kind ever written that includes a lone appendix containing a joke about a duck in a hardware store. Other than that, it's just not in-depth enough to justify it as a must-read.

Rating:
Summary: Sugar-flavored medicine for bad writing disease.
Review: From the writer of "Woe Is I" comes the companion volume "Words Fail Me", full of invaluable insights on clear and correct writing, and as instructional, informative, practical and witty as its predecessor. This book, written in an engrossing, humorous and charming style, offers useful advise on effective writing, including topics such as subject, time and place, point of view, repetitions, rhythm, emotion, writer's block, sense and reason, and even the writer's audience.
It is extremely well organized for quick checkups, and covers both the basics and the not so basics that any decent guide on good writing should. The examples presented are carefully chosen to perfectly illustrate the advice given, and the tips and tricks included will permanently help you avoid the common errors that usually hinder the flow and smoothness of fine writing.
No book can make you a better writer, but this book can make you better at writing. Whether you are a beginner or a professional, a fiction or nonfiction writer, or simply someone who loves writing but dislikes studying the nuts-and-bolts of English in droning grammar and composition textbooks, this book will prove itself to be a priceless reference.
Besides the author's "Woe Is I" I also recommend, for equally sound advice on writing, minus the added wit and humor, Zinsser's "On Writing Well" and Strunk's "The Elements of Style".

Rating:
Summary: A Meeting of Art, Reason, and Fun.
Review: Patricia O'Conner's Words Fail Me presents so many practical insights into effective writing that I suspect it would be valuable to almost any writer. And there's a bonus: she has a great sense of humor. She debunks the faux pas fallacies that snobbishly tell us how not to write -- don't use contractions, don't start sentences with conjunctions, etc. And she tells us how these supposed 'rules' came to be. Wisely, O'Conner's most important rule is this:
"Your first duty to the reader is to make sense. Everything else -- eloquence, beautiful images, catchy phrases, melodic and rhythmic language -- comes later, if at all. I'm all for artistry, but it's better to write something homely and clear than something lovely and unintelligible."
I read quite a lot, mostly nonfiction (philosophy, reference, science, theology, and wilderness travel). Inevitably, reading compels me to write -- I've submitted more than fifty book reviews to this forum. Yet I'm never quite happy with my writing. This is not unusual. "Your favorite novel or history or memoir is just someone's last revision," says O'Conner.
As a student I disliked studying the nuts and bolts of English. Words, their accuracy, economy, and artistry, interest me far more now, and this book is the first "how to write" text I have read. At the risk of belaboring the obvious (because good writing doesn't): it was a good choice.
Highly recommended.