Will Write for Shoes - Cathy Yardley

Subtitled How to write a chicklit novel, this comprehensive text begins with a history and definition of the genre:

a subgenre of the larger classification of women's fiction, generally a
coming-of-age or "coming-of-consciousness" story where a woman's life is transformed by the events of the story... a sense of humour... a funny tone... the characters don't take themselves too seriously, no matter how dire the circumstances... deal[ing] with topics that affect a woman's life: friendship dynamics. Glass ceilings. Over-nurturing. Kids and biological clocks. And, of course, love.

I'm inclined to say that this pretty much defines women's fiction in general, but it's not too off the mark. And of course the problem with defining chick lit is that it's constantly evolving and comprises an expanding number of fuzzy sub-genres, so there are exceptions to every aspect of any detailed definition.
This engaging how-to book takes the aspiring writer through all the stages of the writing and publication process. The bulk of the book is divided into two sections - writing and publishing.
The first discusses the basics of traditional novels in the genre; up-and-coming trends (and the pitfalls of writing to capture the wave rather than the kind of writing you want to write); the key points of plotting and a couple of ways to do it (meticulously detailed in advance vs free form and evolving); the elemental but overlooked concepts of structure, setting and voice; and the unpleasant but vital necessity that is editing.
Yardley then moves on to getting published, from query letters and synopsis creation to forming a crit group and networking online. The book is rounded out by answers to questions Yardley (a multipublished author I confess I haven't heard of until now, let alone read) receives, samples of query letters and synopses, and an extensive but American-centric listing of agents and publishers, with brief descriptions of their imprints and histories.
As I'm not interested in publishing my own writing (NaNoWriMo's field enough for me, and I should probably work on academic publication before thinking about a hobby), I found the frequent references to, and tantalisingly brief synopses of, books I hadn't read (What a girl wants by Liz Maverick, The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, American Idle by Alesia Holliday, Fishbowl and Me vs Me by Sarah Mlynowski, The Weight-Loss Diaries by Courtney Rubin, Julie and Romeo and Step-Ball-Change by Jeanne Ray, Play Dates by Leslie Carroll, Carrie Pilby by Caren Lissner, Are you in the mood? by Stephanie Lehmann, and The song reader by Lisa Tucker, among others).
However, as both an amateur writer and reader, and friend of a couple of aspiring writers in the genre, I found what Yardley wrote cohered with what I already knew, as well as expanding on any number of points I didn't know about, particularly in the section on making sure you and your crit group are a good fit. I also thought her advice to bother revise, revise, revise, and to read widely in a varity of genres was well worth reiterating.
Yardley's refreshingly blunt - "if you think of your novel as your baby you're in for a world of hurt", people aren't necessarily going to love it, and you can easily write a synopsis shorter than ten pages - while still being supportive. I found Will write for shoes by accident in the writing section at the library, and though I say this without having read any other how to books for the genre think anyone interested in writing for the market ought to read this book.
If her fiction's anything like her non-fiction, I think I'll enjoy that too - and I'll try to overlook the fact that she's swollen my to-read list past it's previous bulging parameters.- Alex