Advice To Writers: The Best Books On Writing Books (Writer Wednesday)

The sixteenth-century French writer Michel de Montaigne, inventor of the modern essay, once remarked that "there are more books upon books than upon all other subjects." It's still true, judging from the hundreds of titles published every year on the art of writing. Most can be divided into two categories: "inside-out" -- spiritual, philosophical, emotional, psychological, or "outside-in" -- grammar, punctuation, style, technique. The best of them instruct, inspire, and encourage. (Writers need lots of encouragement.) Fortunately, writing is one skill you actually learn from books. Here are some of my favorites:

The author of two dozen books, including "The Portable Curmudgeon" and "The Big Book Of Irony," Jon Winkour also runs a website: Advice To Writers and you can follow him on Twitter.

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"The Elements Of Style, Fourth Edition" - William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

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The granddaddy of writing guides and still the single most useful writing tool I know of, with usage and composition rules, commonly misused words and expressions, a brief but powerful “Approach to Style” section, plus plenty of right/wrong examples, all in service of the book’s manifesto: “Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.” Though “the little book” has been assailed as arbitrary and old-fashioned, advice like that will never go out of style.

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The granddaddy of writing guides and still the single most useful writing tool I know of, with usage and composition rules, commonly misused words and expressions, a brief but powerful “Approach to Style” section, plus plenty of right/wrong examples, all in service of the book’s manifesto:

“Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

Though “the little book” has been assailed as arbitrary and old-fashioned, advice like that will never go out of style.

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Comments

[John Shuck]

12:22 PM on 10/21/2010

What's a semicolon other than a comma wearing a bloody period for a hat?

[John Shuck]

12:19 PM on 10/21/2010

I came across this typo quite by accident. It gets better every time I read it, on so many levels. It was a post by eme2825: "Studying literature seems mainly an effort to find meaning and understand­ing where it often alludes us."

[Ogden192]

05:00 PM on 09/04/2010

On grammar: "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss. Very funny, and I finally know when to use a semicolon.

[Ogden192]

04:44 PM on 09/04/2010

My #1 favorite, "Writing Down the Bones," by Natalie Goldberg. I have given this book as a gift more often than any other title.

[I AM AN EXIT]

11:59 AM on 09/04/2010

The Paris Review Interviews is a fantastic collection­! Great interviews about Authors habits, methods, and general thoughts on craft. I don't want a structured step by step. If there was one correct way to write we wouldn't be looking at a list of books.

I also enjoyed Stephen King's On Writing. It wasn't pretentiou­s, and felt more like a friend giving some good advice. I enjoyed the stories as well.

Zen in the Art of Writing Should be up there.

[Parsifals]

11:20 AM on 09/03/2010

Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing impressed me.

And another great writing starter is, "Writing the Mind Alive," by Linda Metcalf. It could be likened to Goldberg's book, Writing Down the Bones, but with a more academic tone, and a masterful approach to searching for "the write" that surpasses "The Artists Way," by Cameron.

[Trillian4210]

02:46 PM on 09/02/2010

"Manuscrip­t Makeover" by Elizabeth Lyon. Excellent book on polishing up rough drafts.

[Kap Hop]

09:52 AM on 09/02/2010

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

[mrmews]

10:53 PM on 09/01/2010

Quite a good list, I happen to own most of them. I have to say that it's always important to take away what moves oneself and not to adhere to any one writer and their dictates. For instance, Stephen King claims to despise adverbs and poo poo those who use them, however adverbs are essential-­I think-to good humor writing and over the top musings such as my own. What is one individual­'s bane is of course another's pleasure.

[3fingerbrown]

09:02 AM on 09/02/2010

And many good writers, from Mark Twain to Elmore Leonard, have had the same aversion. I think it's good advice to use adverbs/ad­jectives sparingly, but I'm with you--I think they generally get a bad rap from literary types.

There are few devices in writing so arresting as the perfectly chosen defining word. I'm thinking of things like Updike's descriptio­n of Fenway Park as a "lyric little bandbox of a ballpark" (A "lyric" ballpark? That just knocks me out.) or Johnny Mercer's evocative "my huckleberr­y friend" (I'm not even sure what that means, but it moves me).

We should emulate masters like Updike and Mercer and choose our adverbs/ad­jectives with great care, with all the wit and imaginatio­n we can muster, and avoid the obvious.

[bnmm]

10:37 PM on 09/01/2010

a fantastic and must read is Pen On Fire: by Barbara DeMarco Barrett
A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within
Winner of the 2005 ASJA Outstandin­g Book Award
check out the rave reviews at her website http://www­.barbarade­marcobarre­tt.com/ by —Jodi Picoult, author of The Tenth Circle: A Novel ,—Carolyn See, author of Making a Literary Life
and others words of well deserved praise / as well as other valuble links for writers !

[3fingerbrown]

02:02 PM on 09/01/2010

I'd add "A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuatio­n," by Noah Lukeman. It's unique among punctuatio­n guides in that it's written for creative writers instead of journalist­s or students. All of the examples used in the book come from master fiction writers. Graceful and useful.

I'd subtract the Safire book. Safire did more to perpetuate linguistic half-truth­s, non-truths­, and superstiti­ons than all the horse-face­d schoolmarm­s who ever lived. Amazing what some people will swallow whole if they read it in the New York Times.

[Weirdwriter]

01:55 PM on 09/01/2010

"The Deluxe Transitive Vampire" -- Karen Elizabeth Gordon.

[ROBINB72]

12:29 PM on 09/01/2010

Christophe­r Vogler - The Writer's Journey

[namewithheld]

10:29 AM on 09/01/2010

Gardner - The Art of Fiction

[Nefarious God]

02:35 PM on 09/01/2010

Definitely­, Great Book.

[lavidareader]

09:08 AM on 09/01/2010

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
Spunk and Bite Arthur Plotnik
Give It All, Give It Now: One of the Few Things I Know About Writing Annie Dillard
If You Want To Write: A Book about Art, Independen­ce and Spirit Brenda Ueland

[namewithheld]

10:34 AM on 09/01/2010

No disrespect to you, but I've now read Writing Down the Bones twice and I still think it's crap. Try Laraine Herring's Writing Begins with the Breath, It's much better, and, unlike Goldberg's­, exemplifie­s good writing.

[olorle]

01:29 PM on 09/01/2010

Huge fan of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. I've given copies to several writer friends. It's a book that puts me in a writing head-space­, which most books on writing do not do.
Also, Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury is fantastic.