I’ve read a lot of writing craft books over the course of my life, and I thought it would be interesting to talk about my favorites. In general, I don’t like books that are very proscriptive. The ones who give you one correct path you must follow to accomplish your goal. The best ones help you think about things in new ways, and help you put your work and process in a larger context.
So, here are my top 5 favorites
5. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler
This book takes Joseph Campbell’s heroes journey and does a deep dive into what it means and how it can be applied to the writer’s life and career. I’m not the kind of person who thinks every story must follow this structure, but there are some really good insights on how you can regard yourself as the hero of your own story and write the work you are meant to write. The work that only you can write. It’s a new way of thinking about things and unlocked some parts of my process for me.
4. Making Myths and Magic: A Field Guide to Writing Sci-Fi and Fantasy by Shelly Campbell and Allison Alexander
I’ve read a lot of books on genre writing, and this is a good summary of the different things you need to think about when writing speculative fiction of any sort. The kinds of things you might not otherwise think about, whether word-building considerations to taking stock of what you are really saying when you create your fictional worlds in certain ways. It’s also an entertaining read, with lots of actionable examples.
3. Never Say You Can’t Survive: How to Get through Hard Times by Making Up Stories by Charlie Jane Anders.
I’ve read this twice in the last two years, once in the very well-produced audiobook, and another in print. Anders keys in to how creating stories can help us and other people deal with trauma, and other sorts of bad things that happen to us. It’s a hopeful read and talks about the process of shining light into the darkness. It’s as much a book on writing craft as it is a primer on dealing with the things that bother us. After the last decade we’ve had, I think we all really need this, and her advice directly inspired several things in novels I have written.
2. The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win you Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield.
This book changed my life. I read it about a year after deciding I was going to devote myself to writing full time. It introduced me to the concept of ‘resistance,’ which is that invisible force that pulls at us and keeps us from fully committing to putting in the work. Framing it that way helped me break through. This is not a book about writing, per se, but about living as a creative person, and devoting yourself to that pursuit as your own personal divine struggle.
1. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg
This is a book about developing the habits of writing and thinking that will help you develop your voice and figure out what you have to say. This book inspired me to begin a journaling practice which has really saved my life over the past couple of years. It’s about mental habits as well as physical ones and is a great guide to becoming the writer you were always meant to be. There is some specific advice about craft, but it’s mostly about how you can collect things from your life and your learning and how to process that into your writing, and the habits that will allow you to do so.
Those are my five favorite craft books. There are others I love, but these are the ones I can recommend whole-heartedly. What are your favorite craft books? What have you found most helpful?