I have found this on Slate:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/09/ursula_le_guin_s_writing_guide_steering_the_craft_reviewed.2.html

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Unlearning to Write

Ursula Le Guin’s guide to the impossible craft of storytelling.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 9/12/2015, 2:43 PM--

Did you see this, Mimi?

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/17/ursula_k_le_guin_on_myths_modernism_and_why_im_a_little_bit_suspicious_of_the_mfa_program/ 

"I’m a bit of a loner. Counter-suggestible. I just clawed my way up by submitting stuff to editors, the way everyone did then. There were a lot more magazines then. It was a much more open field. It seemed difficult then but it’s much more difficult now."

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THURSDAY, SEP 17, 2015 05:58 PM CDT

Ursula K. Le Guin on myths, Modernism and why “I’m a little bit suspicious of the MFA program”

Salon talks to the literary legend about her new craft book and why sci-fi writers should read Virginia Woolf

SCOTT TIMBERG

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/17/2015, 10:27 PM--

Yes, Carl, thanks. I saw that earlier today. Salon is great for stuff about writers and writing.

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I guess I have to read some Virginia Wolfe. I'm not sure that I ever have, maybe snippets in high school. Her subtle changes of point of view: I have to see what that consists of. As for her swipes at MFA programs, I have read something by a grad of one of those programs (on another site) and I am very unimpressed. It's nicely written, don't get me wrong. It's the concept that irks me. Basically, lack of depth, lack of believable reactions to bizarre happenings. I say to myself, this kid isn't human. I don't get him at all. I wouldn't have bought such shallow characterization, even at fifteen. The story is YA fantasy, and this may be what goes these days. This may be what is marketable, God Help Us All. (Ninety-five percent of the reviewers on the other site have given the thing four or five - mostly five - stars.) What Ursula has to say on the subject of MFAs will interest me greatly.

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So much to read, so little time.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 9/18/2015, 1:34 AM--

Reviews are fine, but I find the most valuable education to be the examining of the work of authors with an impulse similar to my own. I do not mean your own genre. I mean styles that make your heart beat a little faster. For me, that means defying expectations.

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I will read Virginia Wolfe for her migration of point of view. I am reading Cervantes for his author intrusion. I have read many times (at least, sections/here's my hint: the first half is great, the second half, don't bother) of The Cloister And The Hearth by Charles Reade. This Victorian novelist, very popular for a time, quickly fell out of favor for reasons that I well understand. From Wikipedia: 

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Reade fell out of fashion by the turn of the century—"it is unusual to meet anyone who has voluntarily read him," wrote George Orwell in an essay on Reade —but during the 19th century Reade was one of England's most popular novelists. He was not highly regarded by critics. The following assessment is typical:

A strong, healthy air of honest and high purpose breathes through nearly all the stories. A surprising variety of descriptive power, at once bold, broad, and realistic is their great merit. Mr. Reade can describe a sea-fight, a storm, the forging of a horseshoe, the ravages of an inundation, the trimming of a lady's dress, with equal accuracy and apparent zest. . . . Indeed, Mr. Reade wants no quality which is necessary to make a powerful story-teller, while he is distinguished from all mere story-tellers by the fact that he has some great social object to serve in nearly everything he undertakes to detail. He is magnificently endowed with the additional and unique gift of a faculty for throwing his report into the form of a thrilling tale. Mr. Reade is unsurpassed in the second class of English novelists, but he does not belong to the front rank. His success has been great in its way, but it is for an age and not for time.

His attraction is ‘the charm of useless knowledge’. (I love that thought, and this is what alienates many from my own work.) If you have the sort of mind that takes a pleasure in dates, lists, catalogues, concrete details, descriptions of processes and junk-shop windows, the sort of mind that likes knowing exactly how a medieval catapult worked or just what objects a prison cell of the eighteen-forties contained, then you can hardly help enjoying Reade.

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I surely do enjoy his lavish description. I was delighted a few months ago, researching something odd (I’m always researching something), to stumble across an interview of Dorothy Parker, in which she said, “I am the only person you’ll meet who has read all of Charles Reade.” I take heart from that. I share a tiny bit of her humor. You cannot enjoy Charles Reade without a sense of humor. There is sooo much to slog through to get to the wonderful stuff. If you adore beautifully crafted sentences, that alone will keep you going. He writes Victorian mush, but he has that thing called flow in spades.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 9/18/2015, 9:07 PM--

--edited by RCGravelle on 9/21/2015, 5:22 PM--

Bless you for that RC. I know this is a genre site. I sometimes feel very alone here, in my tastes, which are not mainstream. I frequently feel like a pain in the ass, with my offbeat point of view. I fall in love with something and want to talk about it. I know no writers in real life, nor, as far as I can tell, literary-loving readers. Okay, one comes to mind. We've talked about reading Don Quixote together but so far it's gone nowhere. It's summer, we're both gardeners, and I work at night. Maybe this winter.

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I just found a list of literary fiction offerings on here. I scrolled down the names of the authors. I've never seen most of those names in the discussions. What's with that?

--edited by Mimi Speike on 9/22/2015, 6:39 PM--

Mimi:  I read this book a few years ago and liked it, certainly better than I like most books on writing.   She's a good writer with a a good attitude, and she eschews certain techniques that are popular these days (present tense narrative, for example) and for good reason. BUT, as is obvious from the article, she isn't about rules for their own sake. And she and I are entirely in agreement when it comes to having no use for or interest in writing as "therapy" or "personal discovery."

I agree with RC.  There is room for beautiful writing (and I don't mean pretty writing. There's never room for that.) even in genres where most people seem to feel anything less than full-bored action on every page is a waste of their time.  I've read manuals where the author literally advocates putting conflict on every page,  with the belief that every reader has their thumb on the eject button at all times, ready to jettison your book if the heat level cools even slightly (or if they might be tempted to stop and think for a minute.)  Good writing should be in the service of the story, but there are lots of ways of keeping writing interesting beyond constantly pumping the accelerator. Tension can come from the language itself. Think about just how often the tensest scene in a book or a movie is scene where there is no action at all, where the subtext of the story looms like an iceberg under a calm, dark sea. The characters may even be unaware of the danger, but, if the writer has done her job, the reader knows something bad is about to happen.  

Beyond that, of course, tastes vary.  I love Nabokov's prose, even when it does "pause to be admired," but he isn't everyone's favorite. And it's not like he wrote elaborate sentences just because he could or to show what a smartypants he was.  He could also write very plainly when the need was required.  (Personally, I can open Lolita to pretty much any page and be instantly engaged.)

Okay, my last bit. When she says “The chief duty of a narrative sentence is to keep the story going.” we differ slightly. I'd say the first duty of any sentence of narrative is to keep you reading, to make you read the next sentence.  But that can be accomplished in many ways. A good sentence keeps me reading, whether it furthers the plot or not.