Like most writers, I have a constantly growing library of books on the writing craft, and each one is indispensable in its own way. There are 15 on this list, but that number is never static as I discover new writers who have distilled their own unique way of looking at the world and their writing. If you see a craft book you love missing from this list, please suggest it in the comments.
1. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Jane Cameron: For the two decades since I discovered it, I return again and again to Cameron’s 12- week guide for awakening our creativity with exercises and explorations that are as fun as they are illuminating. Artist’s date, anyone?
2. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott: The inimitable Lamott taught me to embrace “shitty first drafts” and so much else, with great humor and humility.
3. Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction, and other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life, by Bonnie Friedman: I love this book for charting the emotional side of the writer’s life—teaching us to keep the terrors of the creative writing process at bay by remembering the art of living a life.
4. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King: Part memoir, part no-nonsense advice on the tools of the trade, not least that the writer needs “to read a lot and write a lot;” for King that means four to six hours a day of reading and writing.
5. The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard: The Pulitzer-prize winning author talks about writing as only she can—in a voice lyrical, sensitive, poetic and finely attuned to the telling detail.
6. The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers, by Elizabeth Benedict: At some point, if you’re writing a novel where adults do adult things, sex is bound to come up. If you don’t want your characters ashamed of your clumsy handling of this delicate subject, this book is for you.
7. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert: There is no better book for banishing the Inner Critic to the corner of your study while you get on with the business of creating magic on the page.
8. The Butterfly Hours: Transforming Memories into Memoir, by Patty Dann: Dann shows us how a single word can summon tiny worlds of memory, transformative for memoirist and novelist alike.
9. Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers, by Susan Shaughnessy: It has become my daily ritual to turn to one of 200 short essays in this slim volume to find precisely the inspiring quote I need and a simple prompt to get my pen moving.
10. The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield: Making you laugh and think in equal measure, Pressfield teaches how to arm your resistance and weather adversity in the heat of the battle, and with chapters like “Life and Death,” and “The Ego and the Self,” he means business.
11. Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, by Dani Shapiro: I consumed this book in one sitting. This beautiful memoir of the writing life made me want to drop whatever I was doing and go write. It will do that for you, too.
12. The Happy Writing Book: Discover the Positive Power of Creative Writing, by Elise Valmorbida: Who says writers need to suffer for their art? Not Valmorbida, who gives us 100 prompts, reflections and cheerful advice for Happy Beginnings, Happy Middles and Happy Ends in your writing process.
13. No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days, by Chris Baty: Baty, founder of the National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo), compiles 15 years of his wisdom from getting thousands of writers around the world to kickstart a novel project every November. It works. I’ve done Nanowrimo twice. Once the dust of the marathon pace had settled, ideas in my head now on the page had staying power.
14. From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction, by Robert Olen Butler: This Pulitzer Prize winner reimagines the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual, an exploration of the human condition with yearning as its compass.
15. Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel, by Lisa Cron: Few of my craft books have been as thumbed over, sticky note tabbed and scribbled in as this eye-opening look at how to crack the story code by understanding what keeps a reader riveted and writing that book, scene by intentional scene.
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