HN Books @HNBooksMonth

_Bird by Bird_ by Anne Lamott http://amzn.com/0385480016

Good, interesting, book on writing from a writing teacher's POV. Useful if you want to read the truth about the struggle to get published. Also good for improving your writing.

_On Writing_ by Stephen King http://amzn.com/1439156816

Stephen King's surprisingly good book on being a professional writer for most of his life.

"Writer's Digest" magazine. http://amzn.com/B00005NIPH

I've been subscribed to Writer's Digest for years. Full of helpful hints, interesting articles, and suggestions for improving your writing, regardless of the genre or media for which you are writing.

Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott is an amazing book about writing. It's funny, very helpful, inspiring, etc...

http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Some-Instructions-Writing-Life/dp...

⬐ wallflower

Repost but Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the best treatise on writing (and by extension, creative expression) I think I've ever read. Here are some excerpts - I believe its worthwile reading the entire essay many times:

"I often hear people say, 'I’m not good enough yet to be published.' That’s quite possible. Probable, even. All I’m saying is: Let someone else decide that. Magazines, editors, agents. They all employ young people making $22,000 a year whose job it is to read through piles of manuscripts and send you back letters telling you that you aren’t good enough yet: LET THEM DO IT. Don’t pre-reject yourself. That’s their job, not yours. Your job is only to write your heart out, and let destiny take care of the rest."

"There are heaps of books out there on How To Get Published. Often people find the information in these books contradictory. My feeling is -- of COURSE the information is contradictory. Because, frankly, nobody knows anything. Nobody can tell you how to succeed at writing (even if they write a book called 'How To Succeed At Writing') because there is no WAY; there are, instead, many ways. Everyone I know who managed to become a writer did it differently. sometimes radically differently. "

http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/writing.htm

⬐ MaysonL

Robert Heinlein's "On the Writing of Speculative Fiction" ranks pretty highly up there. Starts off with the old Kipling quote:

  There are nine and sixty ways
  Of constructing tribal lays
  And every single one of them is right!

and ends up with his rules (which he describes as "business habit")

1. You must write.

2. You must finish what you write.

3. You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order.

4. You must put it on the market.

5. You must keep it on the market until it sells.

I refrain from posting the Google Books link to the essay: it's much too long, and so is left as an exercise for the reader.

For working up the motivation to write I recommend "Bird by Bird" by Ann Lamont.

http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Some-Instructions-Writing-Life/dp...

⬐ electromagnetic

Personally I'd say put the book down and just do it, but then I've been writing since I was 15.

My best advice would be to read a really good novel while you're writing, because there's something about seeing a novel unfold whilst you're writing one that seems to help the process along. You'll likely get through 3-4 books (if you read like me) when writing a novel and this can really help in the beginning because you see something started in the beginning really unfold at the end and it's like 'holy crap, thats the best thing in the entire book', then you have a moment thinking 'well why the fuck aren't I doing something like that!', then you do.

The other advantage in reading while you write is that I think it reassures you when you get blocked, because 99% of the time you'll think the story is going too slowly, however that's because it takes like 10-100 times longer to write something creative than it does to read it. I think it was Richard Curtis (Notting Hill/Bridget Jones/Love Actually) who made this point; he was asked why there's such a large gap between all his great award winning movies and he said quite simply, 'because it takes a lot of time to write something important to me'. This is quite well illustrated by his writing credits, he switches between writing a blockbuster movie and TV comedy (Mr Bean) with his friend from university.