Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different
Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different book cover

Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different

Hardcover – January 7, 2020

by
Price
$15.57
Format
Hardcover
Pages
256
Publisher
Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1538717950
Dimensions
5.75 x 1 x 8.63 inches
Weight
12.8 ounces

Description

Praise for CONSIDER THIS "Reminiscent of Stephen King's On Writing in never failing to entertain while imparting wisdom, this is an indispensable resource for writers."― Publishers Weekly "[Palahniuk] reveals surprising humility [with] fresh and accessible ideas. Fans will appreciate the insight into his own work, especially Fight Club (1996), his tributes to friends and forebears, and how he delivers gracious and encouraging wisdom in his characteristically conversational style."― Booklist "For that author who wants to expand his or her horizons and try something new, Consider This by Chuck Palahniuk is the book to pick up. Laugh-out-loud funny[...]there is a world of information in this small book."― p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'}New York Journal of Books "A book for those who want to learn to write dangerously, or perhaps just learn about the man who pioneered 'dangerous writing.' [It'll] inspire you try take a stab at telling your story."― p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'}Booktrib "Tried-and-true practical advice for aspiring writers."― p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'}USA Today "A savvy teacher. [Palahniuk's] advice is highly detailed and practical."― p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'}Kirkus "Grade-A prime Chuck Palahniuk."― p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'}Publishers Weekly This book from Palahniuk is insightful."― p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'}Dallas Morning News PRAISE FOR CHUCK PALAHNIUK:"Chuck Palahniuk's stories don't unfold. They hurtle headlong, changing lanes in threes and banging off the guard rails of modern fiction... With his love of contemporary fairytales that are gritty and dirty rather than pretty, Palahniuk is the likeliest inheritor of Vonnegut's place in American writing."― San Francisco Chronicle "One of the most feverish imaginations in American letters."― The Washington Post "Like Edgar Allen Poe, Palahniuk is a bracingly toxic purveyor of dread and mounting horror. He makes nihilism fun."― Vanity Fair "Dark riffing on modernity is the reason people read Palahniuk. His books are not so much novels as jagged fables, cautionary tales about the creeping peril represented by almost everything."― Time Chuck Palahniuk has been a nationally bestselling author since his first novel, 1996's Fight Club , was made into the acclaimed David Fincher film of the same name. Palahniuk's work has sold millions of copies worldwide. He lives outside Portland, Oregon.

Features & Highlights

  • Renowned, bestselling novelist Chuck Palahniuk takes us behind the scenes of the writing life, with postcards from decades on the road and incredible examination of the power of fiction and the art of storytelling.
  • In this spellbinding blend of memoir and insight, bestselling author Chuck Palahniuk shares stories and generous advice on what makes writing powerful and what makes for powerful writing.With advice grounded in years of careful study and a keenly observed life, Palahniuk combines practical advice and concrete examples from beloved classics, his own books, and a "kitchen-table MFA" culled from an evolving circle of beloved authors and artists, with anecdotes, postcards from the road, and much more.Clear-eyed, sensitive, illuminating, and knowledgeable,
  • Consider This
  • is Palahniuk's love letter to stories and storytellers, booksellers and books themselves. Consider it a classic in the making.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
60%
(754)
★★★★
25%
(314)
★★★
15%
(189)
★★
7%
(88)
★
-7%
(-88)

Most Helpful Reviews

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If You Have a Story to Tell

Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, provides a no holds barred account of how to write fiction as well as an account of his writing life.

Never having written a work of fiction, I can’t comment on the efficacy of Palahniuk’s writing exercises or his various tips on writing. To my amateur eye, they seem like good advice and, despite the obvious difference in tone, many seem similar to Strunk and White’s Elements of Style.

What I can provide is a summary of what to expect if you read this guide as well as who should read it.

A former blue-collar worker, Palahniuk intersperses the guide with personal anecdotes that in total encompass a philosophy, or at least, an outlook on life. Rough around the edges, this perspective does not shy away from life’s darker sides: violence, death, perversion, insanity, etc. But it also contains a genuine desire to connect to his readers and to benefit them by his writing.

He largely addresses beginning writers. He doesn’t hide the difficulty of making a living writing fiction at a time when the novel is no longer the center of popular culture. Nor does he hide the fact that good writing is difficult and requires much practice. But he suggests that those who are passionate about the stories they have to tell should choose to write, whether or not they can make a living out of it.

And how to tell stories is primarily what Palahniuk teaches. He illustrates his points by citing some of the best American fiction of the last one hundred years. Proust and Wolff, for example, are not mentioned since literary fiction with experimental styles is not at all the type of writing Palahniuk is interested in.

But if you have stories that you think readers will want or need to hear, Palahniuk’s guide is as good as any to getting started. While it may appeal to the mixed martial arts viewing crowd the most, anyone really can benefit from his wisdom. The fact that the book embodies his philosophy all the while dispensing writing tips only provides more reason to read it. Highly recommended for would be writers of fiction.
38 people found this helpful
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Practical Useful Information

Palahniuk begins with the valid complaint that most, nearly all, creative writing seminars, courses, and programs consist of listening to some veteran writer or personality who has inflated his credentials, telling war stories. That observation is spot-on. It happens for several reasons: The department heads and administrators responsible for hiring creative writing instructors (or worse, the self-promoters of seminars) almost always choose published writers. Unfortunately, most published writers are not teachers, don't know how to teach, or don't care about teaching.

The result is that very little in hard knowledge gets transmitted. Advice like: Engage the reader; Make your characters interesting; Start with a bang, is offered. Instructors present big general ideas with no practical advice as to how to implement them. Handholding, enthusiasm, or the promise that the instructor has contacts that will get the student published take the place of substantive knowledge and advice.

Palahniuk says he can do better, and he does. For the first two chapters, he offers ideas and practical advice regarding their implementation in writing novels and short stories. In the third section, he begins to fall into the trap he described:
the war story rambling and discussing general topics without concrete examples or implementation strategies, but some good information is present.

I give the book five stars because if it consisted of only the first chapter, it would be better than 95% of the "how to write" books that are published. An excellent handbook, well done Mr. Palahniuk.
37 people found this helpful
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A lot to consider

I've read everything this man has put on paper, so you could say I'm biased from the start, but this book released at exactly the right time in my life.

The stories and advice within reveal much about the author and what made him who he is. I hope to eventually publish work of my own, and this little book makes me feel a little more comfortable with the idea being more than just a far-off dream. Not all books are capable of such things.

I always wanted a "how-to" book from Palahniuk - now I can check that off my list! Real fans will not be disappointed.
20 people found this helpful
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The Bible of Palahniuk

Consider this: I have binged every Palahniuk book on its release day for the past two decades. This one, however, I savored. It took nearly three weeks and two paper cuts.

I could easily go on endlessly about how Palahniuk’s managed to weave a rich tapestry of practical writing advice, memorable fan encounters (oh, the mice!), and witty anecdotes, blah blah blah. But honestly, all of that would be sucking up time you could be using to read this wonderful book. Buy it. Savor it. You won’t be disappointed.

My favorite bit: the anecdote from Ira Levin. A few years ago, when I’d met Palahniuk at The Strand in NY during his Fight Club 2 tour, he told it to me in response to my question about criticism of his work. Time had all but erased the details, but here it was, waiting to remind me in this book. I’m happy to say I’ll never forget it again.
16 people found this helpful
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Great Book for Wannabe Writers. Chuck's Best Book in a Long While.

If you're a Chuck fan this is a must buy. Even if you've been disappointed in recent Chuck books this one is a great return to form. Tons of specific nuts and bolts techniques that Chuck uses to write his stories. You can tell he's giving his best effort to help you out and not holding anything back. Really practical advice that directly applies to writing stories. He gives lot of examples of where the techniques appear in his books, classic books, and favorite movies. I like this better than the Stephen King book, "On Writing". After reading this it went to the top of my list of books about writing. One of the best books i've bought in years.
13 people found this helpful
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This book needs a trigger warning

I'm not a pre-existing fan of CP; I picked this up on a whim at the library. It held my interest, but I have to say that for someone who makes such a big point out of not writing about violence against animals, as he does, it seems MILDLY DISINGENUOUS to then include a passage graphically depicting such violence from David Foster Wallace. I don't know if he did this deliberately; I hope not. However, I fear he did. Last thing I'm reading by CP. After reading this book I can say that I'm glad not to be a member of his fan club.
7 people found this helpful
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If I Were Your Teacher . . .

I subscribed to MASTERCLASS a couple months ago. I find them to be delightful, beautifully-shot, long-form podcasts featuring celebrities, and the theme I'm picking up? 

The best of the best do a horrible job of describing why or how they are the best. 

Chuck Palahniuk is not horrible at this. In fact, he's among the best writers I've ever encountered at showing you how he thinks and how he writes.

You won't find any motivational baloney in this book. Nothing that you see in other craft books: Don't give up. Be passionate. Great things are within you. Great things will happen. 

True? Maybe. Maybe not. But not exactly nuts and bolts advice. 

Chuck can somehow encapsulate an entire 50-minute MFA class on writing into one, memorable line or passage, and he does it repeatedly in this book. It'll wear your highlighter out.

While I loved the memoir aspect of it, the way Chuck articulates how he thinks and how he writes is beautiful, simple, applicable, and memorable. 

On description: 

"We each see a room through the lens of our own life. A plumber enters a very different room than a painter enters." 

On character: 

" A character's mistake or misdeeds allows the reader to feel smarter. If I were your teacher, I'd tell you to establish authority by depicting an imperfect character making a mistake." 

On conflict: 

"Great problems, not clever solutions, make great fiction." 

On motivation: 

"If you're writing in order to do achieve anything else (other than writing), then you should not be writing." 

He opens the toolbox for you. Clocks. Guns. Choruses. Cutting fiction like film. Recycling objects. 

It all comes from an enviable and resilient mindset. Chuck is a famous, renowned author with millions of books sold, and embezzlement cost him a fortune. He takes it all in stride. Why? The perfectly Stoic concept of "If I can't control it, why worry about it?" 

You sense his powerful resilience in this book as he shares stories from the road. You sense honesty here. You'll find no false platitudes.

For example, he declares the novel all but dead, describes how piracy has destroyed the profitable novelist, and steers you away from the tough job of writing at every turn. 

Yet if you persist? You'll be armed and ready. You'll end up with the resilience you need to live your best life, tools to write your best stuff, and some of the craziest, most memorable anecdotes from one of our most memorable authors.

My favorite? The one with the mice.

If I were your teacher, I'd tell you to get a copy as soon as you can.
7 people found this helpful
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ESSENTIAL

This might be one of the best craft books ever written. Buy it. Read it. Study it.
4 people found this helpful
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A Great Book for Aspiring Writers.

I admire Chuck Palahniuk’s work but I don’t enjoy it. I probably would not pick up another of his fiction pieces but I was drawn in by the dramatic cover of his hand turning into grotesque pencils. This is entitled Consider This: Moments in my Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different.

He details how after graduating college with a degree in journalism from the University of Oregon he ended up working at Freightline Trucks on the Assembly Line for thirteen years. Several other of his coworkers also studied journalism. (To me this seems like a red flag of the CIA interfering with smart people to stop them from becoming journalists, but I digress.)

He tells of his setbacks which become opportunities. Kicked out of one writing group because his work is too disturbing he found his writing teacher, Tom Spanbauer and a new group of writers. He tells stories of author tours and other famous writers. If you are stuck or have a particular problem with your work he has solutions.

The stories he tells are interesting although the work hazing ones are horrific and unethical and should never be done. Obviously, drugging people without their knowledge or consent is criminal behavior and you’re more likely to end up joining Bill Cosby in prison than getting an “All good fun.” I feel like Palahniuk was manipulated to include these stories to legitimize this type of criminal behavior. The Weinstein/CIA clique is still oozing up everywhere.
Overall, I think it’s a great book for aspiring writers. Fans of his fiction might like it too because it gives insight into his most popular works.
1 people found this helpful
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Great Fiction Writer, but Non-fiction? Needs work

OK, the book has lots of useful information, particularly if you've struggled writing compelling fiction. The problem -- the MAIN PROBLEM -- is his over-use of the same phrase: "If you were my student..." and "If I were your teacher..." They appear in almost every other paragraph! Where was his editor? Substitute "If you were a reader of this book..." for every time he uses one of the two phrases, and you can see how dumb and annoying it becomes. YOU ARE HIS STUDENT when reading this book. HE IS YOUR TEACHER when you're reading this book. If he or his editor still think this overuse is appropriate, then I suggest they listen to the audio version. Now if Chuck were MY student....
1 people found this helpful

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