You: The Story: A Writer's Guide to Craft Through Memory by Ruta SepetysMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve read HOW TO books before. But I’ve never been touched by them, enough to get teary.
This was my first Ruta Sepetys book but it definitely won’t be the last! She has written five best selling historical fiction novels, and one of them was even turned into a film. This most recent one is different because it’s nonfiction. And one might be forgiven for expecting that a nonfiction book would be boring compared to its fictional counterparts, but this book defies that stereotype. Sepetys writes with a fiction writer’s knowledge of pacing and passionate emotion, done so efficiently yet elegantly at only 212 pages.
Taking to heart the adage “Show, don’t tell,” Sepetys proceeds to do exactly that. She explains the “lesson,” then proceeds to show the reader how it is done. And she does it in the form of short stories that dazzle and declare: this is how it should be.
My personal favorite was “Newer Every Day,” ostensibly an example of how to write dialogue, but Sepetys made it into a glowing tribute to her octogenarian father whose memory is fading, but whose glowing words live on in the memory of a confident, well-loved daughter. I was dabbing the tears away with a restaurant napkin, let me tell you! And that Emily Dickinson quote now hits differently: “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.”
Then she ends each chapter with a recap, writing prompts, and my favorite: Stories to Uncover and Discover. These are a list of seemingly random and mundane things that are mentioned in passing in the previous chapter. The Camino de Santiago. Pantone colors. Coloratura sopranos. Sepetys challenges the reader to look more closely at the familiar, to see the world as a writer would: with eyes filled with wonder.
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