This book is like a tactical nuke: small, dense, and explosive. Rush Hills was a literary editor of the old school, in charge of fiction at Esquire in the days when you could say with a straight face that you read it for the articles. In WIGSSIP he explains what the literary short story is, how it differs from the sketch or 'slick fiction', and how to go about writing one yourself. This isn't a manual, more of a mediation on that most elusive and evocative of forms, the literary short story, but the ideas of coherence, moving characters, and a crisis point are vital ways for an aspiring author to rise above the traps of the mundane.

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Updated for 2017: I return to WIGSSIP whenever I'm having trouble with my own fiction. This time around, the advice centered on character, and your character's roundedness and capacity for change. I think Hills is right. Get the character right, and the rest will flow naturally.