In a market filled with cute writing-realted titles, I am pleased to have come across Write Away: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life by Elizabeth George, author of With No One as Witness and a large number of others.

Though I haven't completed reading the book, I'm highly impressed with the seeming ease with which she crafts her sentenses. That the writing style found in other similar books is apparent comapared to George's is a comfort to me. She expounds on the subtle aspects of writing while remaining interesting and, more importantly, invisible to the reader. George omits writer's prompts, taboo in this book's niche; however, the examples she cites are chosen well and go further to stimilate the imagination and a desire to write than its competitors that do.

Write Away's chapters are named in a way that tells of George's unique angle: Story Is Character; Setting Is Story; Nothing Without Landscape. Her understanding of writing, such as her thoughtfulness in differentiating setting from landscape, is apparent on every page.

As she discusses The Basics, Technique, and Process, three of the five parts in the book, George regularly checks in with her readership: aspiring (or established) writers. She coaches the reader, giving personal and second-hand examples of common challenges. She passes on what has and has not worked for her and why. She sympathizes with writers in the occasional monumental struggle that is success as a writer.

For my money, Write Away deserves its place in the short list of must-have instructional books.

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