I have a rather snooty disdain for how to write books, and I find Ann Lamont, my apologies to all who revere her, a cheerful, boring writer I wouldn’t take advice from on my worst day lol. To help me when I’m stuck, I go to my bookshelves, and pull out books, usually poetry. Emily Dickinson. Louise Gluck, Lucille Clifton, to name just three. I also pull out my James Baldwin’s Collected Essays and randomly read a page and find myself inspired and refreshed. What made me a writer was being a reader. To read is to be rejuvenated. If I want How To, I read cookbooks.
Mar 11, 2023·edited Mar 11, 2023Liked by Hanif Kureishi
Annie Lamott's "Bird By Bird" and Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones." Stephen King's "On Writing" is great, but it's more memoir and a touch sanctimonious. His theory is "Just write," which can be easier said than done, life being what it is at times. On that note let's not forget Eudora Welty's "On Writing" and "One Writer's Beginnings". Welty didn't write for more than a decade while she took care of her ailing mother and brother.
Having said that, if I am stuck with dialogue, I read a good play, Arthur Miller’s or Brecht in German. I also find autobiographies very helpful, as I like writing in the “I” form. Arthur Miller’s Timebends, as well as Philip Roth’s rank amongst my favourites. In a nutshell I prefer these to reading creative writing books. Far more interesting and inspiring, as they make me fall in love with writing all over again.
'The Science of Storytelling' by Will Storr is excellent. And I love to browse 'Writing 21st Century Fiction' by Donald Maass, which is full of prompts and fresh perspectives.
Dear Hanif. On Writing always an inspiration for me. Not too pretentious. And on my own journey away from viable handwriting to typing to dictation as a disabled writer, it brings me back to my own connection to King's inalienable truth. Just write! My latest monthly column in Byline Times yesterday attracted 64k views, so it seems I've still got it, no matter how I pushed it out from my mind!
My late friend, John, was always trying to get me to read a book titled 'The Artist's Way' by Julia Cameron. I never did, and I probably never will. My reservations stem from the association that the book apparently draws between creativity and spirituality, and one's connection with God. I do not regard creativity as the action of the divine interfacing with one's weak and ephemeral mortal form. Furthermore, if there is such a thing as a god, then I do not want to cultivate a dialogue with it, beyond the usual social pleasantries. If a giant crooked finger extends partway across the cracked firmament in expectation of a response in kind, then I am going to leave it hanging.
I regard creativity as arising from a combination of a deep engagement with one's surroundings, a deep immersion in one's thoughts and memories, and various arcane biochemical processes and esoteric neural connections within the brain. While it amounts to the transformation of the ordinary into something more personal, and perhaps even extraordinary, the output, however strange it might be, remains grounded in meat and gristle; in soil and rock.
With all that being said, I did learn something from 'The Artist' Way' that has become the bedrock of my writing. It is the reason why I have never been blocked and why I don't think that I ever will be. I may not have read the writers gospel according to St Julia, but I have had a part of it preached to me by the aforementioned John (who, as I found out after his death, was not a saint).
A foundational exercise in 'The Artist's Way' is the daily production of so-called “morning pages” – an uninterrupted stream of consciousness, scrawled in long-hand. The exercise can be a warm up; a prelude to more focused writing. It can be a brain storming session; an exercise in mental de-cluttering; or just a way of breaking down inhibitions and getting something on paper.
I could never really reconcile myself with the stream of consciousness element of morning pages, which struck me as another form of procrastination. What did appeal to me was the ritual and the potential for the cultivation of ideas.
My first act of writing on any given day entails sitting down in front of my computer. It is a tower PC; always in the same place, with the monitor framed by the wall behind. I do not get up from the chair until I have developed three ideas. This involves taking what may not even be a spark of inspiration – it may be a dim and dying ember – and then breathing life back into it; thinking about how this concept might work within the context of a story, on in a real, or fictional, world.
It is easy to accept the dopamine hit that arrives at the moment of inspiration; to jot down the idea, and leave it at that. That, in my opinion, is not creativity – it's mudlarking in the mire of subconscious thought. The physicist, Richard Feynman, once said (paraphrasing Einstein, I think) “If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it.” I think that a similar principle holds for ideas – you need to gain an understanding of what you have by writing it down and developing it a little.
I write between 50 and 500 words for each idea. Some become the basis for short stories, or even novels in their own right. Some I tag for inclusion in stories that are either in the planning stages, or that I intend to rewrite. The majority lie unclaimed. I save the lot in digital form, and as a paper copy. The latter are presented in a pair of giant ring binders, labelled 'Ideas Vol.1' and 'Ideas Vol.2' .
I have found that by doing this everyday, I can force creativity. There is nothing divine about. It's just brain training and muscle memory. I can sit down and it's like turning on a tap. The act of thinking about ideas and developing them has also helped me in terms of being able to intuitively grasp where a story might go – what would logically happen under such and such circumstances.
In terms of the quality of my writing, building narrative and characters and so forth – I am in the wind there. Most of the time I don't know what I am doing and I fail to stick the landing. What I do know is to how grow and evolve an idea. That is all thanks to Julia Cameron, whose book I will never read.
It is strange that, although I don't subscribe to her spirituality-informed approach to writing, my own creative path has become ritualistic and weirdly pseudo-religious. I think of it as vocational – like being a priest in a monastery, where there is this permanent focus and you attend to it everyday regardless of how you feel. It becomes the meaning of life; an end in and of itself.
Along with some other commenters, when stuck I seek out, not creative writing books, but the creativity of others, for me in any form. I stare at Rothko, listen to Coltrane, etc. to usefully rewire my brain.
May I say, Hanif, reading your urgent early monologues from your hospital bed gave me a good kick up the arse when I needed it. Crisis can be raw meat for creative hunger.
George Saunders’s A Swjm in the Pond is great (also for its survey of the Russians), and the master classes in Lydia Davis’s first collection of Essays (which I also use for teaching CW).
Love “The Artist’s Way”... it’s great at (re)building confidence and self-belief, and understanding why you may not take your ambitions seriously and - to reference Hanif’s DOWN post - provide practical tools to build muscles that better “back ambition”. And so grateful for all recommendations here also!
Another vote for Lamott's "Bird by Bird"--I use the chapter on "Shitty First Drafts" with my college composition students...also good is "The Poet's Companion" by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux--short chapters on elements of writing poetry with companion exercises--really easy to dip around in to get myself putting pen to paper...
For me, having something to say is more important than any amount of instruction on how to say it or write it. The technique is secondary. And I also prefer to learn by reading good writing, or what appears to me to be good writing, in other words, reading what communicates with my mind. After immersion in those types of writing, my own improves. Also writing itself improves the writing. If someone writes enough, and pays attention, they will learn. Why do we write? That is the question. Mr Kureishi has good reason to write and much to communicate, and his writing will surely evolve as will ours.
Did my usual thing of replying and then checking out ray Bradbury who thought was a science fiction writer and he still is and when I came back from this excursion my comment had vanished / it is probably hiding and will be found by someone else - In the now vanished comment I revealed was also reading the Saturday Guardian watching Godfather II (we could discuss that for days)and scrolling through Twitter and reading your Q. Because I can’t cope very well with any kind of comment/feedback this sort of means any burst of creativity must be carefully given up and withdrawn quickly should the worst happen. As you know the worst can be relied on to happen. I have found a puzzled lukewarm reaction to be the killer. Anyhow were I ever to take it all seriously (maybe mid 70’s as by then you know -) would definitely try Mr Bradbury. Zen is good. Now having reached the end of this ramble without any clear answer I am very pleased you are back. Last week was hideous and best forgotten. Have a good Saturday ⭐️🦾
Mar 11, 2023·edited Mar 11, 2023Liked by Hanif Kureishi
No one’s mentioned Release The Bats by DBC Pierre - I’ve gifted it to folk who are stuck or haven’t quite got to where they want to be. It sits next to Bradbury, along from Addonizio … I like Kingsley Amis’s advice about novel writing being like driving from London to Edinburgh without a map - that once you’ve got as far as around Manchester, you’re half way there…and the signs’ll start to show up…what a joy it is to write. Wishing you an easier recovery, every day.
Mar 11, 2023·edited Mar 11, 2023Liked by Hanif Kureishi
I never read one. Never did a course or workshop either. Self-taught. I learnt by reading books I liked and a bit of story telling instinct (grew up telling stories of capers and mischief, adventures, up to no good. Delirium. Police chases and the madhouse). Hopefully, improving as I go. Having said that, I'd be interested to read one. The Ray Bradbury one sounds interesting. Is there one that's easy to refer to for a particular problem? A bit like a building regulations guide. So you can look up a query in the index and find the page you need. That'd suit me better than reading a whole book of things I already know for the most part. Not trying to sound clever. I'm dyslexic and couldn't read till late. Left school with no qualifications. I learnt to write at forty. Paragraphs and punctuation. I wanted to write before but didn't know how. Once I learnt, I was surprised to get published and people liked my books. Weird. There's always something to learn though. So I'd like to do a course on novel writing (can't afford it, as I'm on disability benefits) and get a book on creative writing. But which one? This is my problem, because I can't afford to buy one and find it's no good to me. I do think you can learn much of this craft reading fiction though. And practicing writing fiction yourself.
Great question, Hanif. Thanks for all the ideas! I would also add Julia Cameron's classic The Artist's Way as being a good inspirational book for writers and creatives. The book is full of useful quotes about creativity from a wide variety of creatives, and her notion of "morning pages" has been helpful to so many people, because it is about just letting yourself write freely and without agenda, as with Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. Both live here in Santa Fe, a creative hotspot.
Good morning, Master. My current go to book isn't dedicated to writing but it is an inspirational and thoughtful read on the creative process. Rick Rubin's book 'The Creative Act: A Way of Being'.
Mar 13, 2023·edited Mar 13, 2023Liked by Hanif Kureishi
There are two implicit questions here:
- What are some good books about writing?
- What do you read when you're stuck so you can get back to writing?
I like books about writing, and I've enjoyed many of the ones people have listed here. Nobody's mentioned Kate Grenville's, which was particularly interesting to me because all the examples she uses to illustrate her points are Australian and I hadn't read any of them.
But I don't tend to read books about writing when I'm feeling stuck.
I remember you wrote an essay at some point (in Granta maybe?) about, among other things, Keith Johnstone's Impro. Keith J. emphasizes "generating and re-incorporating". Well, I can happily and easily generate all day long. It's the re-incorporating I struggle with, making the pieces come together so they add up to something in the end.
For years I tried to brute-force that part of the process. It didn't work. The writing books were demotivating because no amount of theory could help me crowbar sense and meaning into the specific stories in front of me.
Occasionally, though, a specific piece of advice can land exactly at the right time and place. In my case it was George Saunders: I read A Swim in a Pond in the Rain recently, while also following his Story Club online. For me, that's what got things moving again.
I'm not sure I can do his method justice in a single comment, but it involves working line by line. "[O]ne way to get a story out of 'the plane of its original conception' is to try not to have an original conception."
Don't consciously try to make the story into something ("you have to be 80 percent not sure of what it is," he said at one point); just make each line perfect and precise and interesting, according to your own strong preferences, whatever they are.
He trusts that by constant re-reading and re-working from the beginning, making hundreds of micro-decisions, the interesting elements that emerge in the early phases of a story will "eventually [...] interact with each other in a non-trivial way." (Keith J.'s "re-incorporation"!)
It might not be helpful to anyone else, but for me, at least for now, I think it's starting to work. Excruciatingly slowly, though.
The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass, How FIction Works by James Wood, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. I'll definitely check out Zen in the Art of Writing now!
Somehow I prefer books about careful reading than about how to write. Jane Smiley, Francine Prose, George Saunders all wrote such books—13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, Reading Like a Writer, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, respectively. They’re all writing guides in disguise.
Great wake up notes here! Thank you all. And into this day I bring hope and delight. Finally had sun yesterday, first in over three weeks, with a really deep rest last night this day is set to support my hope for connection w others and delight in being.
When I first decided to pursue a writing career, a friend introduced me to Janet Burroway’s WRITING FICTION. There are many books that inspire, but I can’t think of a better one for teaching how to actually do this thing called ‘writing a book.’
Anyone mentioned Annie Dillard's The Writing Life? The whole book is great, and the final chapter, an essay on the stunt pilot Dave Rahm which contains latent lessons for all writers, is a joy.
I read the Highsmith book after you recommended this, and really enjoyed it. I should read some of her novels! Does anyone have a view on which are the best?
I have continued thinking about this question. It gets under the skin because, I guess, it's about facing one's fear.
Another answer I have (from my initial "Don't read books about writing, put yourself in the way of creative work", which I certainly stand by), and one I think may be helpful to a few folk on here, is the archives of the Paris Review are a goldmine of access to rich, deep seams of meditations on the creative process.
I have a rather snooty disdain for how to write books, and I find Ann Lamont, my apologies to all who revere her, a cheerful, boring writer I wouldn’t take advice from on my worst day lol. To help me when I’m stuck, I go to my bookshelves, and pull out books, usually poetry. Emily Dickinson. Louise Gluck, Lucille Clifton, to name just three. I also pull out my James Baldwin’s Collected Essays and randomly read a page and find myself inspired and refreshed. What made me a writer was being a reader. To read is to be rejuvenated. If I want How To, I read cookbooks.
Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg. Brilliant.
A swim in the pond in the rain by George Saunders
Not a book but I learned so much from Mantel’s Reith Lectures about historical fiction writing - lessons I’ve not learned anywhere else:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08tcbrp
Also, On Writing by Stephen King
Annie Lamott's "Bird By Bird" and Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones." Stephen King's "On Writing" is great, but it's more memoir and a touch sanctimonious. His theory is "Just write," which can be easier said than done, life being what it is at times. On that note let's not forget Eudora Welty's "On Writing" and "One Writer's Beginnings". Welty didn't write for more than a decade while she took care of her ailing mother and brother.
HANIF I liked Becoming a writer.
Having said that, if I am stuck with dialogue, I read a good play, Arthur Miller’s or Brecht in German. I also find autobiographies very helpful, as I like writing in the “I” form. Arthur Miller’s Timebends, as well as Philip Roth’s rank amongst my favourites. In a nutshell I prefer these to reading creative writing books. Far more interesting and inspiring, as they make me fall in love with writing all over again.
Dora BEK
'The Science of Storytelling' by Will Storr is excellent. And I love to browse 'Writing 21st Century Fiction' by Donald Maass, which is full of prompts and fresh perspectives.
If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland
I'm seeking one out by Hanif Kureishi.
Dear Hanif. On Writing always an inspiration for me. Not too pretentious. And on my own journey away from viable handwriting to typing to dictation as a disabled writer, it brings me back to my own connection to King's inalienable truth. Just write! My latest monthly column in Byline Times yesterday attracted 64k views, so it seems I've still got it, no matter how I pushed it out from my mind!
My late friend, John, was always trying to get me to read a book titled 'The Artist's Way' by Julia Cameron. I never did, and I probably never will. My reservations stem from the association that the book apparently draws between creativity and spirituality, and one's connection with God. I do not regard creativity as the action of the divine interfacing with one's weak and ephemeral mortal form. Furthermore, if there is such a thing as a god, then I do not want to cultivate a dialogue with it, beyond the usual social pleasantries. If a giant crooked finger extends partway across the cracked firmament in expectation of a response in kind, then I am going to leave it hanging.
I regard creativity as arising from a combination of a deep engagement with one's surroundings, a deep immersion in one's thoughts and memories, and various arcane biochemical processes and esoteric neural connections within the brain. While it amounts to the transformation of the ordinary into something more personal, and perhaps even extraordinary, the output, however strange it might be, remains grounded in meat and gristle; in soil and rock.
With all that being said, I did learn something from 'The Artist' Way' that has become the bedrock of my writing. It is the reason why I have never been blocked and why I don't think that I ever will be. I may not have read the writers gospel according to St Julia, but I have had a part of it preached to me by the aforementioned John (who, as I found out after his death, was not a saint).
A foundational exercise in 'The Artist's Way' is the daily production of so-called “morning pages” – an uninterrupted stream of consciousness, scrawled in long-hand. The exercise can be a warm up; a prelude to more focused writing. It can be a brain storming session; an exercise in mental de-cluttering; or just a way of breaking down inhibitions and getting something on paper.
I could never really reconcile myself with the stream of consciousness element of morning pages, which struck me as another form of procrastination. What did appeal to me was the ritual and the potential for the cultivation of ideas.
My first act of writing on any given day entails sitting down in front of my computer. It is a tower PC; always in the same place, with the monitor framed by the wall behind. I do not get up from the chair until I have developed three ideas. This involves taking what may not even be a spark of inspiration – it may be a dim and dying ember – and then breathing life back into it; thinking about how this concept might work within the context of a story, on in a real, or fictional, world.
It is easy to accept the dopamine hit that arrives at the moment of inspiration; to jot down the idea, and leave it at that. That, in my opinion, is not creativity – it's mudlarking in the mire of subconscious thought. The physicist, Richard Feynman, once said (paraphrasing Einstein, I think) “If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it.” I think that a similar principle holds for ideas – you need to gain an understanding of what you have by writing it down and developing it a little.
I write between 50 and 500 words for each idea. Some become the basis for short stories, or even novels in their own right. Some I tag for inclusion in stories that are either in the planning stages, or that I intend to rewrite. The majority lie unclaimed. I save the lot in digital form, and as a paper copy. The latter are presented in a pair of giant ring binders, labelled 'Ideas Vol.1' and 'Ideas Vol.2' .
I have found that by doing this everyday, I can force creativity. There is nothing divine about. It's just brain training and muscle memory. I can sit down and it's like turning on a tap. The act of thinking about ideas and developing them has also helped me in terms of being able to intuitively grasp where a story might go – what would logically happen under such and such circumstances.
In terms of the quality of my writing, building narrative and characters and so forth – I am in the wind there. Most of the time I don't know what I am doing and I fail to stick the landing. What I do know is to how grow and evolve an idea. That is all thanks to Julia Cameron, whose book I will never read.
It is strange that, although I don't subscribe to her spirituality-informed approach to writing, my own creative path has become ritualistic and weirdly pseudo-religious. I think of it as vocational – like being a priest in a monastery, where there is this permanent focus and you attend to it everyday regardless of how you feel. It becomes the meaning of life; an end in and of itself.
I enjoy Ursula Le Guin's Steering the Craft.
Along with some other commenters, when stuck I seek out, not creative writing books, but the creativity of others, for me in any form. I stare at Rothko, listen to Coltrane, etc. to usefully rewire my brain.
May I say, Hanif, reading your urgent early monologues from your hospital bed gave me a good kick up the arse when I needed it. Crisis can be raw meat for creative hunger.
„Bird by Bird“, Anne Lamott
George Saunders’s A Swjm in the Pond is great (also for its survey of the Russians), and the master classes in Lydia Davis’s first collection of Essays (which I also use for teaching CW).
Love “The Artist’s Way”... it’s great at (re)building confidence and self-belief, and understanding why you may not take your ambitions seriously and - to reference Hanif’s DOWN post - provide practical tools to build muscles that better “back ambition”. And so grateful for all recommendations here also!
Story Structure Architect: A Writer's Guide to Building Dramatic Situations and Compelling Characters by Victoria Lynn Schmidt
13 Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley
Negotiating with the Dead by Margaret Atwood
Moving Targets: Writing with Intent by Margaret Atwood
Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing by Helen Cixous
Dream I Tell You - Helen Cixous. (The introduction is inspiring, even if you read nothing further).
The World of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
Another vote for Lamott's "Bird by Bird"--I use the chapter on "Shitty First Drafts" with my college composition students...also good is "The Poet's Companion" by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux--short chapters on elements of writing poetry with companion exercises--really easy to dip around in to get myself putting pen to paper...
For me, having something to say is more important than any amount of instruction on how to say it or write it. The technique is secondary. And I also prefer to learn by reading good writing, or what appears to me to be good writing, in other words, reading what communicates with my mind. After immersion in those types of writing, my own improves. Also writing itself improves the writing. If someone writes enough, and pays attention, they will learn. Why do we write? That is the question. Mr Kureishi has good reason to write and much to communicate, and his writing will surely evolve as will ours.
Did my usual thing of replying and then checking out ray Bradbury who thought was a science fiction writer and he still is and when I came back from this excursion my comment had vanished / it is probably hiding and will be found by someone else - In the now vanished comment I revealed was also reading the Saturday Guardian watching Godfather II (we could discuss that for days)and scrolling through Twitter and reading your Q. Because I can’t cope very well with any kind of comment/feedback this sort of means any burst of creativity must be carefully given up and withdrawn quickly should the worst happen. As you know the worst can be relied on to happen. I have found a puzzled lukewarm reaction to be the killer. Anyhow were I ever to take it all seriously (maybe mid 70’s as by then you know -) would definitely try Mr Bradbury. Zen is good. Now having reached the end of this ramble without any clear answer I am very pleased you are back. Last week was hideous and best forgotten. Have a good Saturday ⭐️🦾
I love Zen in the Art of Writing, too!
Other excellent ones:
Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different by Chuck Palahniuk
The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
Steering the Craft by Ursula K Le Guin
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Ann Lamott
Not writing guides...but...thought provoking...
A Moveable Feast - Hemingway (not a fan but fascinating insight into the mind of a young writer in 1920's Paris)
Enemies of Promise - Cyril Connolly
My Ear To His Heart - Kureishi....(not read it for years but remember thinking to myself it was inspirational...)
Will look at/read the stuff Hanif and the others mentiined...
I generally find music inspires...not least classical...
No one’s mentioned Release The Bats by DBC Pierre - I’ve gifted it to folk who are stuck or haven’t quite got to where they want to be. It sits next to Bradbury, along from Addonizio … I like Kingsley Amis’s advice about novel writing being like driving from London to Edinburgh without a map - that once you’ve got as far as around Manchester, you’re half way there…and the signs’ll start to show up…what a joy it is to write. Wishing you an easier recovery, every day.
I never read one. Never did a course or workshop either. Self-taught. I learnt by reading books I liked and a bit of story telling instinct (grew up telling stories of capers and mischief, adventures, up to no good. Delirium. Police chases and the madhouse). Hopefully, improving as I go. Having said that, I'd be interested to read one. The Ray Bradbury one sounds interesting. Is there one that's easy to refer to for a particular problem? A bit like a building regulations guide. So you can look up a query in the index and find the page you need. That'd suit me better than reading a whole book of things I already know for the most part. Not trying to sound clever. I'm dyslexic and couldn't read till late. Left school with no qualifications. I learnt to write at forty. Paragraphs and punctuation. I wanted to write before but didn't know how. Once I learnt, I was surprised to get published and people liked my books. Weird. There's always something to learn though. So I'd like to do a course on novel writing (can't afford it, as I'm on disability benefits) and get a book on creative writing. But which one? This is my problem, because I can't afford to buy one and find it's no good to me. I do think you can learn much of this craft reading fiction though. And practicing writing fiction yourself.
Great question, Hanif. Thanks for all the ideas! I would also add Julia Cameron's classic The Artist's Way as being a good inspirational book for writers and creatives. The book is full of useful quotes about creativity from a wide variety of creatives, and her notion of "morning pages" has been helpful to so many people, because it is about just letting yourself write freely and without agenda, as with Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. Both live here in Santa Fe, a creative hotspot.
Good morning, Master. My current go to book isn't dedicated to writing but it is an inspirational and thoughtful read on the creative process. Rick Rubin's book 'The Creative Act: A Way of Being'.
There are two implicit questions here:
- What are some good books about writing?
- What do you read when you're stuck so you can get back to writing?
I like books about writing, and I've enjoyed many of the ones people have listed here. Nobody's mentioned Kate Grenville's, which was particularly interesting to me because all the examples she uses to illustrate her points are Australian and I hadn't read any of them.
But I don't tend to read books about writing when I'm feeling stuck.
I remember you wrote an essay at some point (in Granta maybe?) about, among other things, Keith Johnstone's Impro. Keith J. emphasizes "generating and re-incorporating". Well, I can happily and easily generate all day long. It's the re-incorporating I struggle with, making the pieces come together so they add up to something in the end.
For years I tried to brute-force that part of the process. It didn't work. The writing books were demotivating because no amount of theory could help me crowbar sense and meaning into the specific stories in front of me.
Occasionally, though, a specific piece of advice can land exactly at the right time and place. In my case it was George Saunders: I read A Swim in a Pond in the Rain recently, while also following his Story Club online. For me, that's what got things moving again.
I'm not sure I can do his method justice in a single comment, but it involves working line by line. "[O]ne way to get a story out of 'the plane of its original conception' is to try not to have an original conception."
Don't consciously try to make the story into something ("you have to be 80 percent not sure of what it is," he said at one point); just make each line perfect and precise and interesting, according to your own strong preferences, whatever they are.
He trusts that by constant re-reading and re-working from the beginning, making hundreds of micro-decisions, the interesting elements that emerge in the early phases of a story will "eventually [...] interact with each other in a non-trivial way." (Keith J.'s "re-incorporation"!)
It might not be helpful to anyone else, but for me, at least for now, I think it's starting to work. Excruciatingly slowly, though.
Soñar y contar, de Hanif Kureishi. Esta mañana, p. ej., leí: "Lo importante no es lo que quieres contar, sino justo lo que no quieres contar".
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by Saunders and Zen In the Art of Writing.
The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass, How FIction Works by James Wood, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. I'll definitely check out Zen in the Art of Writing now!
Big fan of George Saunders A Swim In A Pond In The Rain and Light the Dark.
I thoroughly enjoyed, and found invigorating, Stephen King, On Weiting.
I love this comments Community. It’s like being back in the 2000s on the blogs. So civil, helpful and well read!
Somehow I prefer books about careful reading than about how to write. Jane Smiley, Francine Prose, George Saunders all wrote such books—13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, Reading Like a Writer, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, respectively. They’re all writing guides in disguise.
Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott) is a classic, & incredibly useful for clearing log jams.
John Fairfax Creative Writing
Bird by Bird by Annie LaMott
Wired for Story and Story Genius by Lisa Cron. I’ve read most of the others mentioned and her books are far and away the best I’ve found.
I love Ray Bradbury’s fiction and am so pleased to learn of these books. Thank you, Hanif!!
Great writing teaches me every time!
Stephen King’s On Writing, for the memoir as well as the discussion of writing. (First book he published after a body-wrecking accident.)
1. Stephen King’s On Writing
2. Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir
3. Read Dostoevsky :)
This helps: https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/the-writereditor-relationship-patience
Great wake up notes here! Thank you all. And into this day I bring hope and delight. Finally had sun yesterday, first in over three weeks, with a really deep rest last night this day is set to support my hope for connection w others and delight in being.
Henry Miller On Writing
When I first decided to pursue a writing career, a friend introduced me to Janet Burroway’s WRITING FICTION. There are many books that inspire, but I can’t think of a better one for teaching how to actually do this thing called ‘writing a book.’
Anyone mentioned Annie Dillard's The Writing Life? The whole book is great, and the final chapter, an essay on the stunt pilot Dave Rahm which contains latent lessons for all writers, is a joy.
I read the Highsmith book after you recommended this, and really enjoyed it. I should read some of her novels! Does anyone have a view on which are the best?
I have continued thinking about this question. It gets under the skin because, I guess, it's about facing one's fear.
Another answer I have (from my initial "Don't read books about writing, put yourself in the way of creative work", which I certainly stand by), and one I think may be helpful to a few folk on here, is the archives of the Paris Review are a goldmine of access to rich, deep seams of meditations on the creative process.
Beautiful. I would add to the list On writing, by Stephen King, which is a very kind read.
Ursula LeGuin, Steering the Craft
Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Traveled
Blake Snyder, Save the Cat