A Novel in a Year by Louise Doughty

Can you write a novel in a year? Probably not, according to the introduction to this book, a collection of the columns of the same name published in The Daily Telegraph throughout 2006. Doughty writes: "In the feature that started the column, I was careful to explain that for many new writers three years was probably a more realistic estimate." But, of course, A Novel in Three Years isn't such an arresting title for a column or a book. Doughty goes on to say that she wouldn't dream of "being proscriptive", and that 90 per cent of her book will probably be useless for each reader, and that her own books are not perfect. If I were to continue this review in the same apologetic, timorous tone then I might comment on how nice Doughty seems (she really does), and how it's not up to me to decide whether this is a good book or not, and that maybe readers should make up their own minds, and so on. But then that wouldn't be a very honest - or engaging - book review. So I won't bother with all that.

This book does contain some good advice for would-be novelists, although much of it is commonplace ("don't tell, show"), banal (it's probably better to write than have the curtains dry-cleaned) and irritating ("A novel is written in increments, just as a weight-loss plan happens pound by pound"). It is also not quite as banal and irritating as many creative writing books out there. But since virtually every creative writing manual restates, usually in a tone suitable for a slightly simple child, what Aristotle said with more force and brevity in the Poetics, one tends to look for the extras. In other words, beyond telling the aspiring writer to use action not narration, and that metaphors can be quite useful, and that a work of fiction usually has a beginning, a middle and an end, what is this book actually offering? Although there are so many possibilities here (and we should not forget that once upon a time, before the creative writing industry flopped into existence, there were such exciting things as aesthetic theories and manifestos), what these books usually offer are writing "exercises". They don't tell you to make it new, or to burn your books if you realise they are irrelevant, or to write in your own blood or anything horrible like that. There's no need to get worked up about all this: it's only writing. It doesn't even matter if you can't write, or if you have nothing to say; the exercises will still help.

The first one in this book asks readers to complete the following sentence: "The day after my eighth birthday, my father told me..." This should have the same appeal for a writer that a colouring-in book would have for an artist, or a synthesised backing track for a composer. What's wrong with looking at a blank page and then writing your own sentence? Or not writing one? The suggested sentence, with its emphasis on childhood, family and the domestic world, in itself reveals much of what is wrong with the creative writing industry. As Ali Smith and Toby Litt pointed out in their introduction to New Writing 13, the domestic, when written for its own sake, can often be disappointing. Although they were heavily criticised for their comments, Smith and Litt were rightly suggesting that writers take more risks. This book hardly asks writers to take risks: there's a whole section on why it's a bit childish to have sex and swearing in your novels.

The autobiographical exercises aren't the worst thing in this book. They at least ask the reader to be authentic. The worst thing in this book is the exercise that asks readers to "Spin your globe or leaf through your atlas. Pick a country, but not the country where you live or any other country that you are particularly familiar with...". The reader is then invited to invent a character (perhaps a "Tibetan businessman" or an "Icelandic goatherd") from this country using only second-hand research. Some of the results, posted on the website that went with the original column, are reprinted, with encouraging comments. "Who would not want to listen to this Italian, created by AJS: "You bite your thumb at me? I bite my thumb at you! Eh! It's a big joke. You think so? I ... will stick you like a rat.' " Or worse: "My name is Nguyen Ho Ky. Of which I am very proud. ... I grow rice. We all do. It's harder to work in the rice paddy now than before the war. As you can see, I only have one leg."

Perhaps it goes without saying that the only thing we learn from this is the way in which Telegraph readers articulate their ideas of foreignness. Anyone who is still not sure what's wrong with this exercise should imagine a stranger doing the same thing to their life and passing it off as credible fiction. Surely all serious writers should engage in defamiliarisation, not the reverse?