14 Insightful Books on Writing & the Writing Life
Part II in a series of Favorite Resources to Keep You Writing
In the course of coaching the members of my OneRoom novel writing group, I often find myself recommending books about writing and the writing life. I recently recommended Andre Dubus to someone who was unsure about devoting so much time to writing without tangible outcomes. Here are some books that will keep you writing.
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
“It’s a simple and generous rule of life that whatever you practice, you will improve at.”
Create Dangerously by Edwidge Danticat
“Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This what I’ve always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing knowing that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.”
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
“My earliest memory is of imagining I was someone else.”
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
“Read your work aloud, if you can, if you aren’t too embarrassed by the sound of your voice ringing out when you are alone in a room. Chances are that the sentence you can hardly pronounce without stumbling is a sentence that needs to be reworked to make it smoother and more fluent.”
Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino
“In the even more congested times that await us, literature must aim at the maximum concentration of poetry and thought.”
Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures by Mary Ruefle
“Every great poem has a problem.”
Artful by Ali Smith
“How could 30 years be the blink-of-the-eye it felt? It was the difference between black-and-white footage of the Second World War and David Bowie on ‘Top of the Pops’ singing ‘Life on Mars.’”
When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson
“I love the writers of my thousand books. It pleases me to think how astonished old Homer, whoever he was, would be to find his epics on the shelf of such an unimaginable being as myself, in the middle of an unrumored continent…All together they are my community, the creators of the very idea of books, poetry, and extended narratives, and of the amazing human conversation that has taken place across the millennia, through weal and woe, over the heads of interest and utility.”
A Life in Letters by Anton Chekhov
“Because I am so unused to writing at length, I sometimes worry about getting tired, not managing to say quite what I want to, and not being serious enough.”
Meditations from a Movable Chair by Andre Dubus
“In that space between my heart and diaphragm was the fear I always feel before writing, when my soul is poised to leap alone.”
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
“Try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose.”
Bringing the Devil to His Knees ed. Charles Baxter
“Omniscience not only invents a world; it tells us how that world works and how we should feel about the way it works.” — Richard Russo
The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo
“Writing is hard and writers need help.”
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
“Dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down. Further, accentuating all these difficulties and making them harder to bear is the world’s notorious indifference. It does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories.”
It’s exhilarating to follow the lineage of your favorite writers, seeking out writing — books, letters, whatever — by whoever taught them, and join in this fascinating centuries-long conversation.
What did I miss? Add favorite books about writing and the writer’s life in the comments below.
