CR 078: Elizabeth McCracken on the ‘Long Game’ of Writing Fiction

The award-winning author discusses her love of a good sentence, the importance of community, and why most writing advice is useless.

Elizabeth McCracken, photo by Edward Carey

Elizabeth McCracken wants you to know that if you don’t know how to write a book, it’s okay. She doesn’t either. This might sound odd coming from the author of four novels, three short story collections, and a memoir. Yes, she’s been awarded numerous honors, including the PEN New England Award and three Pushcart Prizes. Yes, her 1996 novel The Giant’s House was a National Book Award finalist. Yes, she’s taught fiction writing at University of Texas at Austin and the Iowa Writers Workshop. But in her latest work, A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction, she points out that much of what we think we know about the craft of writing—all the rules, the advice, the guidelines—is, to put it bluntly, hogwash.

If McCracken has learned anything from her decades of writing, it’s that there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to writing. That is why A Long Game is almost an anti-craft book. In it, she encourages the reader to let go of the musts, make mi…