Gentle Writing Books for When Life Gets Rough
Four books with a gentle approach and encouraging tone along with specifics about starting or maintaining a writing practice during difficult times.
2K to 10K - Rachel Aaron
Based on a viral blog post from 2011, Aaron attempts to impart her speed demon writing ways. She claims that most people double their writing output following her method.
Tool: Alternative Narrative Structures
Consider the best pattern for your story might not be a “narrative arc” or five act structure. Stories can also expand or collapse in spirals, meander through multiple plots or points of view, or be loosely associated narratives with a single root point.
Meander Spiral Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative - Jane Alison
Like a natural historian of text, Alison catalogs and describes several alternative narrative structures at both the macrotext and microtext level.
Tool: The Master Study
Today we are going to steal a tool from the visual artist’s cabinets and see if we can bang it into shape that works for writers. It’s called a Master Study, and it’s part copying, part analysis, and all hands-on learning.
Tool: Modulating Voice
Clark gives us the language to describe what is often seen as indescribable, the unique voice of each writer.
Murder Your Darlings - Roy Peter Clark
Clark summarizes over 50 writing books in six categories, with insightful commentary and bullet-pointed lessons at the end of each chapter.
Anything worth doing is worth half-assing
I've got a writing book problem. Every time I have a book writing problem, I pick up a writing book, and since writing is hard I've read dozens of writing books in the last decade.
The List
After a party one night my friend Lance asked me how many writing books I had read in my life. With one thing and another, and no little ammount of whisky, we started what I came to call the The List
Science Fiction 101 - Robert Silverburg
A master reminisces on his childhood and teaches you how to pick apart stories for their meaty writing lessons.
Techniques of the Selling Writer - Dwight V. Swain
A 50’s era pulp writer speed runs your writing knowledge.
The Artist’s Way - Julia Cameron
That book with the morning pages. Cameron's OG writing advice book, a twelve step program in reverse, instead of breaking a habit you are building one.