Never Say You Cant Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories by Charlie Jane Anders

Never Say You Cant Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories Reviews

• 
  Cindy

  3.5 stars. Not a life-changing book that would alter the way I write, but a good pep talk thanks to Anders' infectious passion for writing.
• 
  Nina Harrington

  Never Say You Can't Survive is a lot more than a manual about writing and life – it is solid gold sprinkled with fairy dust.
  I am a bestselling published author in three genres, and a totally story structure geek, and I can honestly say that this is the first book that I have read in a long time that made me stop in my tracks, think hard about the writing process, and come out the other side inspired and motivated.
  I took five pages of detailed notes on everything from characterisation and the psychology of community support systems to the power of positive literature in a time of international crisis.
  It is difficult to select specific examples from a book where every page seems to have a unique thought-provoking insight into story development, but I particularly enjoyed the chapters on using plot devices and turning points and how to leverage the ending to drive the revision process. Also, how to use the power or emotion and sensory description to add layers of interest to any scene. The chapter on worldbuilding was remarkable!
  I would heartily recommend this book to any writer who wants to develop their story craft and build amazing works of fiction – and have fun doing it.
  
• 
  Spencer Orey

  A great combo of a pep talk and a craft book full of good writing advice. The writing section is a bit jack of all trades, so a nice pick for getting a big overview of how to write better. There were some sections (using anger as a way to write other emotions) that I wanted to be longer.
• 
  Alan

  
  Charlie Jane Anders' book
  Never Say You Can't Survive is not just a memoir. Nor is it just a writing guide.
  Never Say You Can't Survive is a manifesto, and all the better for it—it's a polemic, and a pep talk, too, with practical advice for the aspiring writer as well as for readers of their works. And it's polished—the "Uncorrected Proof" I received as a Goodreads giveaway seemed just about ready for publication anyway. I found nothing to nitpick about—which is rarely the case for me, even for published works.
  
  

  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?
  —Introduction, p.2-3

  
  
  
  Never Say You Can't Survive is fierce, and funny, and fascinating, and foolish in places. Take the title of Chapter 6, for example:
  

  Don't Be Afraid to Go on Lots of First Dates with Story Ideas
  —p.53

  Heh...
  
  From later in that same chapter, this more serious observation:
  

  Part of the fun of writing science fiction and fantasy is that there are almost no limits. If you're writing a murder mystery, you start out with the idea that someone is getting murdered, and the murderer will (probably) get caught. If you're writing a romance, two or more people are probably going to fall in love. SF and fantasy contain hundreds of subgenres, in which certain things are probably inevitable, like a steampunk story probably needs to blow off some steam. But still, when you start writing a piece of speculative fiction, that blank page can turn into almost anything you want.
  —pp.55-56

  
  
  Anders' advice is colloquial, breezy, and straightforward...
  

  There's only one thing more intimidating than a blank first page, and that's a blank tenth page. At least when you're starting a new piece of writing from scratch, anything is possible. But once you've started weaving a bunch of narrative threads, you'll have a much harder time unweaving them.
  —p.60

  
  
  

  So I've changed how I think about productivity. A good writing session can consist of all kinds of things, including rethinking, brainstorming, editing, and even just staring into space. I used to obsess about my word count—the raw number of new words I had added to the project—until I realized that some of my best writing experiences were ones in which almost no new words of story were added, but I had a clearer sense in my head of what shape the story should take.
  —pp.132-133

  
  
  Just about the only thing I can complain about is having to flip back and forth to read all the sidebars. But that's an exceedingly minor quibble.
  
  

  Find the logic in logorrhea. Nonsense has a way of redshifting into sense, if you keep going far and fast enough. Especially when there are recognizable human beings in the middle of it, which we'll talk about in a moment. Spend enough time spinning out non sequiturs, and eventually you'll find yourself making connections and associations between them, because that's just how brains work. We find patterns in anything, and all that loopitude suddenly makes a higher kind of sense.
  —p.172-173

  
  
  And sometimes subtle...
  

  If someone else is experiencing success or acclaim writing stories where the only punctuation is semicolons, it's easy to feel as if you need to copy them. That's silly; semicolons are their thing; find your own thing.
  —p.222

  Heh...
  
  Anders' perspective is very much of the moment—her references to the COVID-19 pandemic, doomscrolling, and the former, very much unlamented 45th President of the United States make that clear. But what Anders talks about in
  Never Say You Can't Survive are significantly more universal topics: what to write, and how to write about what you want to write—and so I believe her guide is going to have lasting value beyond any current crises.
  
  
  Annalee Newitz dedicated her novel
  The Future of Another Timeline to Anders, but reading these two back to back was—I swear!—just a happy coincidence. I received
  Charlie Jane Anders' book
  Never Say You Can't Survive as a Goodreads giveaway—and I'm very glad I did. I loved this book, wholeheartedly, and... I think you might just love it too.
• 
  Emmalita

  I felt a little guilty when I was notified that I had been granted an advance reader copy of Charlie Jane Ander’s essay collection, Never Say You Can’t Survive. I am not a writer and I have no aspirations to be a writer. I have no qualifications for judging this book. However, I have never let a lack of qualifications get in my way of judging things. The short version is, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to any creative person.
  
  I have always enjoyed listening to people talk about their creative process, and Never Say You Can’t Survive is that – a writer talking about the craft of writing. Anders frames her essays around using writing to survive hard times. As a non writer, this was the piece that was the most interesting to me. Through the chapters of the book, she melds the elements of the storytelling with surviving a harsh world with your soul intact. Do you feel out of control in the world you live in? As an author, you are the god of your own world. Are you being swamped with rage at injustice? Channel that rage into a story. The joy of the book is when she gets into the details of the why and the how to construct that soul saving story. Anders uses examples from her own books, and other works to illustrate her points. I feel like Never Say You Can’t Survive is going to make me a better reader and reviewer.
  
  The essays are dense and rich. If I had a physical copy, which I will at some point, it would have looked like one of my grad school text books with passages highlighted, underlined, and sticky notes jutting from the pages. There are points when I was reading that I would replace the word writer with the word adult and the advice worked. If I could, this review would be a series of quotes that resonated with me as a person and as a reader, and quotes I want to stick in front of the creative people I know who doubt their own brilliance.
  
  I received this as an advance reader copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
• 
  Stephanie

  Don't make the mistake I did when I started reading this book in a public place - because for the first time in my life, a book on writing made me cry, and it happened in public! The introduction is just so powerful and resonant as it addresses the question of how and why we can manage to write through global fear and stress and personal overwhelm. I loved the whole book, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to writers at every stage of their career. The actual craft tips (which will be very useful for new writers) may not be new or needed by long-time writers, but it's still helpful to be reminded of them - and Anders devotes a lot of the book to the psychological game behind the writing, which is hugely valuable no matter how long any writer has been working.
  
  A really wonderful book to read and also to keep for re-reading some very powerful reminders of why it's worth it to keep going and how we can get through our worst times and stay creative (or come back to our creativity) after all.
• 
  A. _____

  I feel like I've spent all year with Charlie Jane Anders, reading her books and listening to
  Our Opinions Are Correct (highly recommended, btw). Fair warning, she's been one of the highlights of a rubbish year, and my review is pretty biased.
  
  Never Say You Can't Survive is a series of essays on writing and creativity in tough times. The essays were written as
  a series for tor.com through 2020, and published in this collection in 2021. I am deeply grateful that I discovered the audiobook (fantastically narrated by Charlie Jane) this year, when I was desperately in need of something to shake me out of my writing funk, and give me permission tell me it was ok, even good, to write and create when everything is going to shit.
  
  The book has five sections, starting with "Getting Started", a broad overview of the process of finding and nurturing creativity; the second is on finding stories; the third section is on emotions--yours and your character's emotions, and harnessing emotions in life and in fiction. The last two sections, "What we write about when we write about spaceships" and "How to use writerly tricks to gain unstoppable powers" cover the nuts and bolts of crafting a story.
  
  I took almost a month to listen to the book, giving myself days between sections to absorb the lessons in each essay and do the exercises. I am definitely a better writer now than when I started the book. I am more comfortable with the idea of trying and failing, and I feel like I have a better sense of the process of constructing characters, plot and story from the sentence up.
  
  I've read a fair few books on writing over the last two years, and this is one of my top three (along with
  Philip Lopate's
  To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction and
  Vivian Gornick's
  The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative). Most books on writing tend to focus on either the mystical "art" of the process, or the hard graft, the "craft" of it. Never Say You Can't Survive covers both the art and the craft, and does so in a clear, accessible, concise, funny, and immensely kind and sensitive way. Highly recommended for any writer, whether or not they are currently struggling to get through hard times by making up stories.
• 
  Stefanie

  Loved this book! It's a book about writing in general, not writing to get published or for any specific purpose other than to write the stories only you can tell. It might be fanfic, or short stories, or a novel, or essays, or your private journal. Anders is a kind and generous dispenser of her own experience and offers all kinds of useful tips and thoughts.
• 
  A.M.

  Each chapter was posted weekly online at Tor.
  

  But lately, I’ve been realizing that I haven’t actually gotten any better at finishing the stories I start. Instead, I’ve just gotten quicker to realize that something’s not panning out, and it’s time to jump tracks. When I was putting together my upcoming short story collection, I went back and looked through all the stories I wrote when I was starting out—and somehow, I had forgotten that for every story I finished, there were five or six that I didn’t. And I found tons of notes and other evidence of me banging my head against the same wall over and over.
  I had to learn to stop thinking of leaving a story unfinished as an admission of defeat, or thinking that it reflected on me as a writer. I had to give myself permission to move on.

  
  Oh yes…
  And this one:
  

  To utterly misquote Hunter S. Thompson, when the going gets weird, the weird become paladins.

  
  That’s the spirit.
  4 stars
• 
  Daniel

  One of the (many) issues with writing books is that almost all of the ones I've read by anyone with any apparent writing credentials, that is to say, from authors with actual novels that you could actually find in a bookstore, are from authors whose fiction I really have no interest in.
  
  For me, that group includes Stephen King, so, you know, there's no real reason anybody should be insulted to be stuck in that group. I do own one of Charlie Jane Anders' novels, but it's one of those cases where I bought it, and then before actually reading it ended up learning things about it that convinced me I wouldn't like it, so I never did.
  
  Reading this didn't really change my mind about that. Not because this was bad or I thought her advice was bad, but because in describing what she likes and looks for and tries to put in her stories she pretty much reinforced the idea that it's not what I like or want or look for in fiction. Also I think our senses of humor are not a good match, though there is some funny here.
  
  That said, I enjoyed this mostly as one writer's opinions and ideas about writing.
  
  The early part of the book is an emphatic defense of escapism and an exhortation to ignore the elitists and haters and write what makes you happy. There are probably other people who need or will enjoy the same thing. I agreed with a lot of what she said here and highlighted a ton of stuff. The last part of the book does shift more into the sort of traditional, practical advice common to writing books, but overall I'd categorize this one more as the inspiration pr0n type book.
  
  There are some exercises. I have never been a fan of exercises in writing books, I think they are stupid and useless and insulting. Here they are extra annoying for being oddly placed in the middle of chapters and disrupting the flow.
  
  Should you read it? I don't know. If you're someone who's held off writing something you want to write because of ideas about what you "should" write, then maybe?
• 
  britt_brooke

  Anders reminds us how creativity can provide a respite during the worst of times. And these times are pretty damned awful. From big themes to the nuts and bolts of putting pen to paper, this guide will encourage you to try, or at least think, and that’s what matters. It just made me feel good, ya know? Now, I need to try some of her fiction!
  
  
• 
  Johanna Käck

  While the tone of this book was too chatty for my own personal taste, it did a good job of demystifying writing processes and it definitely made me itch to take up creative writing again.
• 
  Linda

  This was the most fun book on writing I've read, and I've read a lot of books on writing. Charlie Jane Anders avoids saying the same-ol-same-ol that so many how-to-write books say. Where most books tell the reader to finish something, absolutely finish stuff, she'll compare unfinished work to blind dates where the chemistry didn't click. In other words, Anders doesn't make the reader feel guilty for all the pages that never went anywhere.
  
  Even when giving advice the reader has heard before, she makes it amusing. I know I've picked up other how-to-write books and lost interest halfway through, partly because they say nothing new and partly because the writing is less than inspiring. All through Never Say You Can't Survive I kept coming up with new ideas. This book made me want to write.
  
  Thanks to Netgalley, Ms. Anders, and Tor for allowing me to read this digital ARC in return for an honest review.
• 
  Sahitya

  I have actually not read any of the author’s books before, maybe just a few short stories. But I love her podcast with Annalee called Our Opinions are Correct and when I saw the idea of this book, I was very intrigued.
  
  I don’t even know if I’m the right audience, because other than writing reviews, I have no other writing background or aspirations. I’m also not much of a creative or imaginative person - so I feel no way eligible to judge this book for it’s content, specifically all the wonderful craft related ideas and messages the author gives. But I loved the theme of how writing a story that one really wants to tell, channeling our fears and concerns and rage into characters and stories, can really help us deal with our issues or maybe just feel a bit better for a while. I found so many quotes and lines in this book that would apply for many troubling situations, not just for a writer but for any person, and I think that’s the beauty of this book - how universal it is in its messaging while also catering to the specific needs of writers trying to put forth their work in times when the world around us is going to hell. And I thought even though the book is for writers and other creative people, it was quite helpful for me as a reader and reviewer as well, and I feel it will definitely have a positive impact in the way I consume and analyze stories from now on.
  
  I think this will be a book I will look towards many times in the future, especially when I’m feeling a bit down. Hopefully I’ll buy the paperback when it releases and highlight it a lot.
• 
  Allison Williams

  I've been a Charlie Jane Anders fan since the iO9 days, and it is such a pleasure to have her wisdom on writing and the writing process in one beautiful book! The book is organized with sections on storytelling, writing techniques, and the writing life (among others), making it easy to dip in and read a chapter before starting my own writing for the day. I'm finding useful insights that I'm able to immediately apply to my work, and I love her inspirational-but-never-cheesy tone. Every writer should have this one on the shelf!
  - Allison K Williams, author of SEVEN DRAFTS
• 
  Emily Fortuna

  I’m going through a hell of a time and I really was hoping this book would help me find my way through. I was ready to…write my way out. 😏 But, perhaps my personal emotional struggle is too big to simply write my way out of? The advice in the book at times came across as overly blithe, which, frankly, hurt.
  
  As an example, there’s a line in there: “So those moments when I feel most trapped at the rock bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of gaddamn needs? Those are the exact moments when I feel it healing and freeing to imagine a character who goes for what they want, shamelessly and ruthlessly.” Rock bottom, eh? Look, I’ve been very fortunate to not live with real food insecurity or worry about not having clean water to drink or something to cover my body. But as someone who has dealt a LOT with that second rung of Maslow’s hierarchy being met, in my personal experience, when you’re literally unsafe or your body is betraying you and putting you in massive amounts of pain, I…literally cannot stop and imagine something else. The need is all-consuming. So, it comes off as a bit glib to simply turn your anger into tenderness (another suggestion in the book).
  
  Maybe I’m just a Negative Nelly, and my inability to see my…not-always-survivable-situation (to quote the book) in a positive light is keeping me there. But I was hoping (desperately!) for more.
• 
  Trish

  This was not what I expected it to be. I thought it would be more about the author, rather than a selection of essays on how to write. Interesting, but not as compelling as I'd hoped.
• 
  Kevin Craig

  I NEEDED this!
• 
  Julie

  This is, at its heart, a craft book. I think the title could be misleading. While CJA does address how creativity and imagination can be a refuge and a rebellion, the majority of the book focuses on macro to micro writing advice. I took what worked for me and plan to pass it along to another writer for them to do the same. As CJA's says in the book, "nobody changes the world on their own."
• 
  Courtney Kenney

  A must read for writers! I adored this book and dogeared many pages that I’ll be going back to. The book features several exercises and I plan to go back and do them. This is by far the best book on writing from an author in recent years. To me it ranks up there with On Writing by Stephen King and Zen and the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury.
• 
  Suz Jay

  This wonderful writing book includes five sections which cover getting started, what to write about, what constitutes a story, feelings, and writerly tricks. Some of the individual topics include imposter syndrome, uncertainty, creating characters, voice, ideas, endings, emotion, revision, plotting, common story problems, character change, world building, weirdness, writing about other experiences, and relationships.
  
  The book is a compilation of writing essays written for Tordotcom to share advice for writing despite obstacles such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The book includes plenty of examples and exercises and Charlie Jane Anders’ encouragement is like having a personal cheerleader. Each essay has a conversational tone making the information more palatable than a typical writing craft book. I especially liked the chapters on keeping writing fun, writing about different experiences/cultures, and writing the story only you can tell.
  
  While Anders is a speculative fiction writer and some of the craft advice relates specifically to storytelling, NEVER SAY YOU CAN SURVIVE is an excellent resource for all writers whether they write genre, literary, non-fiction, or poetry.
  
  I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
  
  Thanks to Tordotcom for providing an Advance Reader Copy.
• 
  Rachel

  Charlie Jane Anders hits it out of the park (again). This book has all kinds of angles on kindling creativity and then making it work as a story. How to get ideas, put them together, build a world, make your characters interesting, create empathy, pace the plot, evaluate and edit your work. Strategies for when you're stuck, and how to know when you need to abandon a project, at least for now. And suggestions and elaborations that make each part of that eminently do-able. If I were writing a story, I'd keep this book next to me.
  
  It made me feel like I could possibly write fiction. I've written many software and hardware manuals, and written and edited lots of nonfiction. But when I used to think I'd write science fiction short stories, I didn't come up with viable ideas. Plus I'm socially odd and have a hard time figuring out how people relate to each other, so how could I write about people? Well, with the writing exercises and suggestions in this book, and a writing group, I might be able to do all that. Then again, the book shows how much of a job it is to write; you need to take time and you need to focus. So (at my age) probably not. But if I ever decide to, I will buy a copy of this book - and I don't buy books.
  
  Oh, and the title, and some of the content, is about using your past (or present) trauma to inspire and inform your stories, and using your writing to transmute your trauma. Good stuff.
  
  The book is short and easy to read. I drew out my reading over a couple of months because I wanted to spread out the inspiration as long as I could. It's that good.
• 
  Leo Robertson

  Lovely!
  
  Took me longer to finish than I expected because I kept putting it down to write notes for my work in progress. Typed like 3000 words into my phone!
  
  Gave me new ways to interrogate my work and delve without fear into all aspects of writing—even asking yourself what it’s about, what it means to you, what it’s trying to say, questions I’d always warded off for fear they would kill the magic of my writing.
  
  But just like anything, the more you know, the more you stand a chance of doing something about it ☺️
• 
  Ruth

  A fun and uplifting book about writing in a world turned to toxic sludge, packed with advice, anecdotes and encouragement.
  
  Re-reading almost exactly a year later to supercharge my inspiration in advance of this year’s NaNoWriMo.
• 
  Anna Evans Eklund

  I really enjoyed this book. I've seen a lot of reviews saying that while it didn't necessarily provide anything new for certain readers, it was encouraging/welcome/inspiring/comforting/etc., and I very much agree with this. This makes it a wonderful resource for new writers, young writers, starting-out writers, you-get-the-idea. This also makes it a wonderful resource for burnt out writers. Like me.
  
  I benefitted from reading this collection, largely because it did exactly what it said on the tin: it held my hand during a rough time (described in this book in such hilariously perfect ways as "trash-fondue" and "landfill hurricane") and told me that not only could I still create during a time of exhaustion and rage, but I could also channel those very elements into my creation. That I knew how, but maybe I was too tired to remember, so here were some short, gentle chapters collecting thoughts, tips, tricks, ideas, and some humorous examples that had a greater likelihood of staying with me. That there were authors who had done these very things, and done them well (and here were examples to go look at if I needed to hold them physically in my hands). That, above all, there was still a point to trying.
  
  Thank you, Charlie Jane Anders, for these reminders, and for collecting them into this book, despite of (and because of) your own exhaustion and rage.
• 
  MargaretDH

  I'm not a writer, but I do occasionally like to read the manual, as it were.
  
  Anders wants everyone to tell the stories they want to read, and writes movingly about how stories can uplift and inspire during dark times, and the importance of seeing people who look like you in fiction. (Anders is trans.) But there's also a lot of nuts and bolts stuff about pacing, creating characters, writing dialogue and how to write divergent timelines. Everything is underscored by how much Anders loves fiction and writing, and if a writer needs a pep talk, this is probably a good one.
  
  Anders's voice is bright, enthusiastic and conversational. If you want to know how to write a book (just to write it, not to sell it), either for practical or curiosity reasons, this relatively brief set of essays is a good one to pick up.
• 
  Alana

  Never Say You Can't Survive is the best book on writing I've ever read. Written during the pandemic and originally published as a series of essays, it's ostensibly about writing during times of crisis, but ultimately is the most readable, obvious-but-mindblowing advice and explanations I've ever read. Charlie Jane can tell you something about writing that on its surface you could probably explain yourself, definitely you knew that, and yet the way she words things unlocks something in you, leaving you scrambling to your own work in a fit of inspiration—or at least, it has for me, which is amazing. My latest manuscript now has twice the depth than last week because of maybe fifty pages of advice.
  
  I recommend it for every writer, especially those on the newer or aspiring side.
  
• 
  Erin

  My brain was in the wrong place when I opened this book. I expected (based entirely on vibes and the work I'm doing in therapy, I guess?) for this to be about using writing as a trauma response with specific, detailed, dark advice relating to horrible experiences. It's not that, thank everything.
  
  Instead Anders has created a book that is part motivational speech and part good, consistently useful thoughts on the nuts and bolts of writing. Her advice isn't meant to be universal; all of her wisdom can be tailored to fit each writer who reads this book.
  
  Oh, and did I mention the writing prompts? Anders includes some solid prompts that encourage us to pay attention to the structure and the intentional choices we make while writing.
  
  I'll be using this book a bunch, without question. Glad I bought it.
• 
  Chris

  I really loved this book about storytelling. Somehow it feels more about engaging storytelling than writing. It is about writing who you are and who you want to be. I found the book held my interest and lived the odd examples and references to current literature and media. I would love this book just for the title. I don't write fiction but found many things I could apply to writing poetry and evaluating other books I read. The book feels very current and respectful of the world I want to live in, which makes sense given who the author is. I had read one book by this author before and did not live it. I am glad I gave thus book a chance and suggest it to readers and writers.