Happy August. (Eek!) So many writers produced great ideas about creativity and the craft in July — the stuff just grew like the cornfields and grapevines here in the bee-you-tiful Missouri Ozarks. Here are five reads that inspired me during that summerest of months.
- “Creativity is the focused combination of unlikely things,” writes Atomic Habits author James Clear in a recent newsletter. “Your mind locks onto a certain element and then searches widely for something unexpected that fits with it. What can scuba diving teach you about agriculture? What can trees teach you about public speaking? There is always some connective tissue between disciplines. If you wish to be more creative, look for the connections between two previously unconnected things.” (Note to self: be more deliberate in discovering those connections and applying these discoveries to my writing.)
- A serendipitous discovery occurred last week. I’ve been listening to the audiobook version of George Saunders’ A Swim in the Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, read by Saunders himself, which is a delight. I’ve struggled to read some of the Russian masters, so I thought perhaps listening to some of their works might be more profitable. I’m about two-thirds of the way through the audiobook, and I plan to finish it. But in case I don’t, Nathan Baugh, the writer behind the World Builders Substack, has given me an exit strategy by summarizing seven key takeaways from Saunders’ book. Baugh calls A Swim in the Pond in the Rain “The one book to read if you want to become a better writer” but adds that, at 400-plus pages, it isn’t a quick read. What fascinates me most about the book is how Saunders deconstructs the seven stories at a very technical level, probably better than any craft book I’ve read (or, in this case, listened to).
- Unconventional Settings Create Unique Stories is the title of a new craft essay by Tommy Dean, a masterful writer and editor who has been featured on this website. In this essay, Dean focuses on the important role a setting can plan in the very compressed form of flash fiction, which is his specialty. “If a story isn’t working in a rough draft, one of my first thoughts is to change the setting, to get it out of the common and into the slightly weird or unusual,” he writes. “Stories set in the usual places with the usual concepts or situations are too easily classified and labeled, and we want to create the ineffable, the mysterious, the unnamable. We want stories that are more than their summaries, that must be read, pondered, and felt by the reader.” He then offers some examples to help his fellow writers think more critically about the importance of setting. Good stuff.
- Thinking about a work in progress was recently on the mind of the aforementioned George Saunders, who discusses the thinking about process in this essay on his Story Club Substack. What I most appreciate about this essay is how Saunders talks about the “thinking about thinking about” stage of story creation — that is, the thoughts about the story before any element of the story has even been committed to paper or keystrokes. “There’s a certain feeling I get when I start thinking about a story while not working on it. … I’ve learned to recognize (mostly) the difference between two modes of thinking: passive thinking (good) and aggressive thinking (less good).” This one is really worth reading, especially if you, like me, ponder the directions a possible story might take.
- A (much-needed) pep talk against distractions, by #1000WordsofSummer author/champion Jami Attenberg, is just the kind of kick in the butt I’ve been needing. Thank you, Jami!
Have a good weekend.
Andy writes! 
Thanks for another great Friday Five. My reading list has grown exponentially since you started sharing your inspirations and mental modus operandi.