Never Say You Can’t Survive - Charlie Jane Anders
If you need a rallying cry or a shoulder to cry on to help you create right now, Never Say You Can’t Survive might be the book you need to read right now.
Tone: Aggressively positive, contemporary advice grounded in the post-covid era.
What: A complete guide to writing a book when the world is burning down around you.
Who: All writers who could use a little hope. If you’ve got a story to tell and a social media thread isn’t going to cut it.
Read it When: You’ve lost hope in the universe, your story feels insignificant; you need to scream against the world, you need to write a story that matters
% on Topic: High. Some biography, but relevant to topic.
Keywords: Beginners, Prompts, Writing in Tough Times,
I have recommended Never Say You Can’t Survive a few times already on the blog, but I still struggled to write this review. Not because the book is not good or useful, it emphatically is. But I have been struggling with my anger over how this book continues to be more and more necessary as we hurtle into the future. The book's subtitle How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories has never felt more relevant. If you are struggling to create right now, you should read this book.
Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Lessons in Magic and Disaster and The City in the Middle of the Night, which has won just about all the awards. She also has an amazing TEDTalk “Go Ahead, Dream About the Future.”
The book opens with her argument for why writing matters most when times get shitty.
“People sometimes talk about escapist storytelling as a kind of dereliction of duty—as if we’re running away from the fight. That’s some garbage right there, because escapism is resistance. In her 1979 essay collection The Language of the Night, Ursula K. Le Guin paraphrases Tolkien: “If a soldier is captured by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?...If we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of Liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape and take as many people with us as we can.”...Visualizing a happier, more just world is a direct assault on the forces that are trying to break your heart. As Le Guin says elsewhere, the most powerful thing you can do is imagine how things could be different…What if?” p2
Aside from the question of how do you format a 4x nested quote (me quoting Anders quoting LeGuin quoting Tolkien), this sets the tone for the book: part effective and thorough writing book, part emotional triage for our current times, part rallying cry to create our way into a better world. And it works.
I am usually not a fan of writing books where a good portion of the book is the author telling their life story (see #shouldvebeenabiography), but in this case the stories are relevant to the thesis. Charlie is a trans woman, so her commentary on writing as resistance is especially persuasive. Advice like using your fears and your anger to fuel your writing might not be for everyone, but they might be exactly what you need to hear right now, in this moment in time.
Biographical sections aside, this is also a comprehensive writing book, with chapters on the majority of things you need to know to get started writing a novel or short story and writing exercises throughout to help you hone your skills. There’s nothing especially groundbreaking about any of the content, but the references to other works are contemporary and the language is more millennial blog than boomer classroom lecture.
There are also chapters that speak more directly to current fears and issues in writing. Chapters like Imposter Syndrome is Just Part of Being a Writer; Embrace Uncertainty: The Joy of Making a Giant Mess; and How to Tell a Thrilling Story without Breaking Your Own Heart speak to current fears about creating and sharing that just haven’t been covered in most older writing tomes.
Overall Anders has written a solid writing book that speaks to the current moment in ways that only feel more relevant as we get deeper into the current mess. In a time when even a cozy story where nothing much happens and everyone is safe can be read as a political statement, Ander’s words on political stories felt especially relevant to me:
“When you’re living through a historical nightmare, it’s easy to feel as if the real world is becoming some kind of exaggerated metaphor, or thought experiment. During such times, we need starkly political fiction—but we also need the kind of resilience and hope that come from stories about real, breathing people grappling with tough situations. “All stories are political” is another way of saying, “All stories are about people living in society.” And that means the more real and messy you can make both the people and the society, the sharper the politics will be.” p. 149
If you need a rallying cry or a shoulder to cry on to help you create right now, Never Say You Can’t Survive might be the book you need to read right now.
If you'd like to buy this book based on this review, please consider using this affiliate link to help support the site.
