Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process

The long-awaited guide to writing long-form non-fiction by the legendary author and teacher.

In Draft No. 4 John McPhee shares insights he has gathered over his long career, and has refined while teaching at Princeton University, where he has nurtured some of the most highly regarded writers of our time. He discusses structure, diction and tone, observing that “readers are not supposed to notice the structure. It is meant to be about as visible as someone’s bones’.

This book is a vivid depiction of the writing process, enriched by personal reflections on the life of a writer. Everything in this luminous book is enlivened by McPhee’s keen sense of writing as a way of being in the world.