I’ve read a fair few books on writing. Some books are really interesting theory; some books are really useful instruction on how writing mechanics work. Some are utter balderdash. This book takes another tack. While it has some really good advice for how writing works (especially if you can analogize from the song-writing advice) and some worthwhile thoughts on theory, the real gem of this book is the mentoring it gives in the practicalities of being an author, the struggle of the author in all its ugliness and beauty.

The author of this book, Andrew Peterson, knows what he’s talking about it. His Wingfeather Chronicles deserves a recommendation all its own. =In that series, Peterson mixes whimsy with a truly serious story- dark and light in its measure, with real pathos and joy- without compromising either. His plotting and characters too are well-crafted, incorporating theology (theme) without artificiality or detriment to the integrity of the story. Book Four, which concludes the central story (with the other books being supplemental or their own stories),¹ has an ending I don’t think I will ever forget, one of those endings that sticks to your brain like mud to a toddler, bittersweet and poignant and hopeful at once. Few books I’ve read have achieved as impactful an ending.²

His songs are also pretty good. I’m being short here not because I don’t like them but because I don’t have as much to say. I do recommend Behold the Lamb of God,³ though, to which I can give the compliment that I usually catch myself remembering the lyrics from songs for two days after listening to it.

So, credentials aside, why should you read Adorning the Dark? Let’s look at two parts: the writing advice and the writer advice.

In Chapter 11, Selectivity, Peterson addresses a problem that authors don’t really outgrow: unnecessary bits. It’s a problem I’ve come to recognize when editing my own work. Much of the process of editing, especially the early part, is cutting, cutting, cutting. Words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, scenes, they all need to go sometimes. A lot of the time it’s easy. I can hack off one word here and five words there and an entire sentence over there without a twinge of pain.

Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes, I look at a sentence, and I love it. This is a good sentence, I think, I framed my words so well. Why the pain? Because when I look at that sentence, I am not just thinking, What a good sentence. I’m thinking this: That sentence has to go. It’s not a necessary sentence. It doesn’t say what needs to be said, or what it says doesn’t need to be. It doesn’t lift up the sentence around it, doesn’t reach the reader in the right way, doesn’t make the story better. It’s the thousand-dollar gear that’s an inch too wide for its place in the engine, the best part of the whole thing but also the worst because it drags everything else down.

Those sentences, words, paragraphs, scenes, they hurt to prune. Sometimes you can save a twist of the words here, an idea there, stick them in an ideas document to be recycled for another day. Sometimes you have to just say that this thing you love has to go in the garbage, stay in the first draft. ‘Someday,’ I may tell myself, ‘If I ever read the first draft again, I’ll be glad I got rid of this.’ It still hurts.

Peterson addresses this problem with the keenness of a man who has experienced it himself, who has considered it well in himself, and who knows how to convey the fruit of his experience to others. He addresses it too with nuance and experience that is lacking in the much more terse advice of Strunk & White, whose simplistic statement of the principle made me almost contemptuous of it for a period of my life (a very foolish choice; Strunk & White are usually right, if you add enough nuance and experience to their bare-bones instruction). Peterson has this to say:

‘As you grow as a writer, you’ll figure out what needs to be said and what doesn’t, and you’ll know when to let it breathe. Some plants need pruning. Others are meant to grow wild.’

Adorning the Dark, Chapter 11

I could pull more quotes. About two paragraphs down from this gem, Peterson has another paragraph that I almost copied wholesale. What you really need to do, though, is go read it yourself.

I promised that Peterson talked about being a writer as well as about writing. Chapter 12, Discipline, gives us an example of his wisdom here.

A good starting point for our discussion comes fairly late in the chapter, when Peterson writes regarding his efforts to create an appropriate Vol. I album for an already-extant Vol. II:

I’ve sat at the piano for hours already, looking for lyrics and melodies, but everything sounds the same and I feel as uninspired as ever. Does it mean I’m finished? A more sobering thought: if I’m finished, would I miss it? But the truth is, I’ve been here before. Many times. We all have. So how do we find the faith to press on?

Adorning the Dark, Chapter 12

If you’ve been writing for long enough, you know this feeling intimately. You’ve started on something, gotten halfway or a third of the way or two-thirds of the way through, and suddenly trying to write it hurts. It’s not as good as you saw it in that first rapturous moment (Peterson talks about this too). Writing is painful now, an exercise in putting one foot in front of the other while you’re dead-certain that you’ve turned around and headed straight for nowhere. The story doesn’t rhyme with your soul anymore, and you’re not sure it ever will. It’s easy to stop writing.

I’ve done this. I’ve hit that point a few different times in my current project, and those days are no fun at all. Worse, the times I hit that seem to come harder and faster the longer I persist in the project (though, thank God, I’ve also seen the light in the middle of the tunnel occasionally, and I desperately needed those sky-lights). I can remind myself that stopping just makes it worse, because it does. Stopping because you can’t figure out how to go forward just makes sure that it’s harder to start going forward again, and every time you do it, the next time gets just a bit harder. I can remind myself of that, but it doesn’t cure the difficulty.

Peterson shows the wisdom of a man who has faced this problem before and knows he will face it again. As he says near the conclusion of the chapter:

At about 1:00 a.m. I pinned it down. Or maybe I set it free. I could hardly hold my eyes open, but I managed to perform my chapter-finishing ritual: (a) save the document called “Chapter 32”; (b) copy and paste it into the body of the document called “All Chapters” so I can see my word count and page number; and (c) feel like I’ve accomplished something. It’s a good feeling, and on nights like that night, a hard-earned one. 

Adorning the Dark, Chapter 12

I hope I’ve given you two good glimpses of why any aspiring author or artist should read this book. It’s a book not just about writing but about writers, not just about art but about being an artist. It’s not narcissistic or impractical, like such a book very easily could be, and Peterson keeps his feet firmly on the ground, on an evident Christian faith. If you’re just getting started with writing, I recommend this book highly. You’ll learn a lot from it, and you’ll learn to recognize the pitfalls ahead of time. You’ll still fall into a lot of them, unfortunately or fortunately; that’s part of life and writing and the brokenness of human nature and the suffering sin brought into the world. You’ll recognize them better, though, and you’ll be able to see better how other men have traversed the morass before you.

To those of you who have been writing for a while, though, my recommendation is even more stringent. If you’re the new writer I mentioned above, come back, re-read this book. See the problems with the eyes of somebody who has met them, who still struggles with them as I do. This book is good when you’re new, but when you’ve spent some time in the trenches you’ll understand first-hand what it’s talking about, and it will give you a starting point to climbing up out of the trenches, to surviving the fact that there’s always a new trench to fall into on this earth, to preparing yourself for clambering up out of those future problems. This book is for an artist a must-read, as close to the mythical 10/10 as I’ve seen.⁴

Footnotes

1 – I haven’t read the most recent one, which I discovered while writing this post.

2 – Impactful on me, that is.

3 – Check the YouTube playlist out.

4 – It’s definitely a 9/10. The Lord of the Rings is the only 10/10 I’ll acknowledge (and the Bible the only one that is too excellent to fit on the scale).