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| Rebel Yell: A Short Guide to Fiction Writing |
| Lance Olsen |
| Cambrian Publications ISBN 1-878914-50-2 234pp $18.95 (£14.95 available from BBR-Online |
Review by Rebecca Toennessen  |
| There are more "How to Write Astoundingly Good, Six-Figure Yielding Fiction" books than you can shake your half-chewed pencil at, and nearly all of them are rubbish. Unlike most other writing guides, Rebel Yell starts off by telling you just how impossible this is, and how even finding yourself published in the small press is going to be a journey that’s uphill both ways. In fact, he nearly advises you to switch off your PC and take up knitting instead. Despite this initially depressing outlook, Rebel Yell had me jonesin’ for my notebook, totally revved up and more exciting about writing than I’ve been in years. Why? Because Lance Olsen doesn’t lie. He tells you how hard it is. Then he tells you to go ahead and script anyway. Once you accept the fact that most mainstream publishers are looking for sellable, simple work and that the inherent nature of the industry is not conducive to nobodies, the realm of possibilities in the small press seems a veritable Pandora’s Box of possibilities. Alternative fiction, like the early punk scene, revolves around DIY ethics, enthusiasm for creating and a masochistic desire to keep on truckin’ – and if you get up to this point and punch the air in enthusiastic affirmation, it only gets better from here. Before launching into any "rules" or advice, Olsen is brutally honest about MFA programmes. His is probably the most well-rounded analysis of higher education workshops I’ve ever read and I do hope its been reprinted several times because its advice that needs to be read by both pro- and anti- MFA camps. The bulk of Rebel Yell dissects the various basics regarding how to improve as a reader as well as a writer, how to expand on those millions of ideas shrieking around your grey matter, how to discipline yourself, and how to revise your reams of fiction to completion. This is all written lyrically (and at times – laugh-out-loudly), and full of the passion of a committed wordsmith desperate to pass on advice and interesting tidbits. Interspersed are short interviews from editors and writers who are as sassy and in yer face as Olsen is. Rebel Yell ends with sound advice from a man who knows regarding what to do when you do succeed and how to promote your work. Finally, the power of DIY in the hands of even the most hapless PC enthusiast will buzz the creative impulse with a million volts of pure stokedness. You’ll turn the last page and immediately scan it again and again. I can’t say it enough: if you’re tired of how-to books advising how to spit out capable, sellable, but ultimately dull and unimportant fiction you NEED to buy this book. And try not to lend it out to your friends ’cos you’ll never see it again. |
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The world is over-stocked with people who are ready and eager to teach other people to write. It seems astonishing that so much bad writing should find its way into print when there is so much good advice to be had. Robertson Davies |
Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least. P.D.Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield |
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