Startle and Illuminate: Carol Shields on Writing (Anne and Nicholas Giardini)

For as long as I have been working to publish fiction, I have had sticky notes with advice from Carol Shields decorating my files and folders.

I pulled sentences from interviews, radio and print, and sometimes, after a particularly difficult rejection (you know the kind), I would sit and stare at one of those little scraps of paper until I believed that I could try again. Because the kind of advice that Carol Shields had to offer was the kind of advice that I most needed to hear.

Which is why, when I first heard of this collection, I was afraid to read it; I was afraid that it wouldn’t be everything that I needed it to be. But it is: it is everything that I hoped it would be.

Anne and Nicholas Giardini (daughter and grandson of Carol Shields) have gathered a variety of materials, from their personal papers as well as from Carol Shield’s archives, and they have carefully edited it into sections, which read in the author’s voice (and sometimes the materials are directly in her voice, pulled from letters to other writers, for instance, and an entire chapter of letters to creative writing students).

The book begins with a consideration of the significance of stories and storytelling, underscoring the need for writers to read widely and attentively. I began to make a lot of notes in this chapter but then recognized that each chapter is followed by a section which itemizes the key points for readers (very convenient).

Shields is not afraid to challenge conventional advice: “Write about what you know, people say, but how do you know what you know?”

Nor does she bother to fancy-up her advice: “You have to pay attention and have the patience to move the words around until they are both precise and allusive.”

She offers concrete and specific suggestions: “The use of public transportation can be extremely profitable to fiction writers, who are always looking to restock their supplies. And so are such public places as elevators or restaurants.”

And she also comments on how a writer should be: “Be willing to engage with vulnerability, including yourself in that vulnerability.”

And if I needed something else to scribble on a sticky note? There are plenty of contenders. Like this:

“The love story may have lost credibility, but consider the notion of a bird flying through life side by side with another, their wings almost but not quite touching, the two of them guided by an inexplicable binary radar, and an instinctive wish to join their lives together. That is a story worth risking.”

Great stuff for writers who are taking that risk.

Shields, Carol. Startle and Illuminate: Carol Shields on Writing. Ed. Anne Giardini and Nicholas Giardini PRH – RHC, 2016.