My 5 Favorite Books on Writing

When I was considering whether or not to participate in the WordCount Blogathon, I took a peek at the calendar of events, and saw that the first theme day was blogging about your five favorite books on writing. My mind quickly zoomed past any fears I had about blogging every day for 31 days and zeroed in on my bookshelf. I thought to myself “Oh yeah, I got this.”

I love books, and I’m passionate about writing. So it’s no surprise that I’ve invested a lot of time and money in books on writing. Here are my five favorites plucked straight from my home office bookcase.*

On Writing by Stephen King

When I told my husband – who is also a writer – about this theme day, he said “All I can think of is the Stephen King book.” The Stephen King book that he mentioned is called On Writing. Some literary types may not have a high opinion of Stephen King. They call him a book machine and would never deign to read his thoughts on the subject of writing. But King is a master of plot, a curator of pop culture and a bare bones wordsmith. Now, the first part of On Writing reads like a memoir. King talks about his childhood, growing up with his single mother and brother in Maine. He started writing unauthorized student newspapers, wrote short stories for science fiction and girlie magazines and became a school teacher to pay the bills.

One of my favorite anecdotes from this part of the book is when King talks about writing his breakout novel, Carrie. King reached a point in writing Carrie where he wasn’t emotionally attached to the story, didn’t really like the main character and so he decided to trash what he’d written. He writes that the next night he came home to find his wife, Tabby, with the pages. “She’d spied them while emptying my wastebasket, had shaken the cigarette ashes off the crumpled balls of paper, smoothed them out, and sat down to read them. She wanted me to go on with it, she said. She wanted to know the rest of the story. I told her that I didn’t know jack-shit about high school girls. She said she’d help me with that part. She had her chin tilted down and was smiling in that severely cute way of hers. ‘You’ve got something here,’ she said. ‘I really think you do.’” How different things would have been for Stephen King if his wife hadn’t seen something in his garbage. King says that “Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference.”

The second part of On Writing is what King calls the “Toolbox.” This is where he breaks it all down for you. His rituals – he writes every single day, even on holidays, with a goal of completing ten pages. King believes that fear is at the core of all bad writing and that the road to hell is paved with adverbs. The Toolbox also includes copies of his handwritten edits and a list of books that the author has enjoyed.

The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan

Stephen King was in a rock band called the Rock Bottom Remainders, which included many notable writers including Dave Berry, Barbara Kingsolver and the writer of my next favorite writing book, Amy Tan. Amy Tan is the author of one of my favorite novels, The Joy Luck Club, so I couldn’t wait to read her memoir, The Opposite of Fate. The Opposite of Fate is a series of essays that reveals Tan’s thoughts about her writing and shares more stories about her life and her relationships. Tan’s mother and Asian heritage are often sources of inspiration for her books, but she makes clear in The Opposite of Fate that she writes not for notoriety or to represent her gender or ethnicity, but to satisfy her own curiosity about the stories she is crafting. I think that’s an important message to receive: you should always write for yourself. Note that this is the opposite of advice I would give you if you were asking me about marketing writing, which is always about your audience, not you.

Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott

Thank goodness for Anne Lamott. In her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, she gives every writer the permission – no, the mandate – to write a shitty first draft. In fact, that’s the title of one of the chapters, “Shitty First Drafts.” Lamott busts through the myth that all successful and beloved writers get up each morning “feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much.” As you can tell from that excerpt, Bird by Bird is filled with Lamott’s great sense of humor. Her voice is very conversational. The chapters are concise and based on questions that she has received from her writing students and aspiring authors. The title of the book comes from a story that Lamott tells about her older brother. When her brother was ten, he waited until the last minute to write a report on birds that he’d had three months to finish. He sat at the table in tears, completely overwhelmed by the task at hand, and Lamott’s father sat down beside him and said “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

The thing that all of my favorite writing books have in common is that they all include personal stories, not just writing how-tos and rules. Julia Cameron was once married to Martin Scorsese and was a successful writer-director who had a big-time problem with alcohol. Even though her life was in tatters, she was afraid to give up drinking because she saw alcohol as the only way to silence the negative voices and real-life issues that blocked her creativity. How she got sober and learned to uncork her creativity without the bottle became the source of her book, The Artist’s Way. It outlines a 12-week process for all artists – not just writers – to really get in touch with their creativity. Cameron first taught The Artist’s Way workshops in New York City, and then took all of the materials that she developed and began a successful series of Artist’s Way books. At the core of Cameron’s program are The Morning Pages – where artists are instructed to hand-write, stream of consciousness style, for three pages each morning – and The Artist’s Date – where students must make a date each week to visit a museum, see a concert or take in some expression of creativity.

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

Cameron writes that “Art is a spiritual transaction.” Artists are often just channels for the divine whose job is to be open to receive and reflect the message in their work. Natalie Goldberg also takes a spiritual approach to writing in her book, Writing Down the Bones. I have a 10^th anniversary copy of the book, which was originally published in 1986, at a time when there wasn’t a lot of emphasis on creativity. Goldberg has taught thousands of students how to write and says her methods are based on the two-thousand year old practice of studying the mind. Writing Down the Bones is also very succinct, and includes a lot of short lessons. In one chapter entitled “Writing Is Not a McDonald’s Hamburger,” Goldberg writes “Allow yourself to be awkward. You are stripping yourself. You are exposing your life, not how your ego would like to see you represented, but how you are as a human being. And it is because of this that I think writing is religious. It splits you open and softens your heart toward the homely world.”

If the religious or spiritual aspects of writing aren’t really your thing, then definitely stick with the Stephen King and Anne Lamott books. I could go on and on; my bookcase runneth over. But it’s your turn now – what are your favorite books on the craft of writing?

*All links to recommended books are Amazon affiliate links.