Draft No. 4

Why it’s on the list: John McPhee’s eight essays on how he actually writes — structure, interviewing, checking facts, and the long misery of a fourth draft, his own term for the pass where a piece stops being research and becomes prose.

Where I heard about it

• Packy McCormick — in his favorite books of 2024 thread on X, December 2024, a ten-book list posted one book per reply, each with a quote. The quote he pulled is about factual writing as a treasure hunt — that the good material tells you what it is when you find it, and often hands you the beginning, the ending and the title.

About this edition

McPhee has taught writing at Princeton since 1975 and has been at The New Yorker since 1965; the essays first ran there.

Connections

• Some of my favorite books… (tweet) — where this was recommended.
• John McPhee — the author.
• The odd one out on a list otherwise made of business history and biography: this is a book about the craft of writing the kind of narrative non-fiction the rest of the list is made of.