Books like Exploratory Writing

This book gave language to something I had long practiced intuitively: doing less, but better. McKeown’s concept of “the disciplined pursuit of less” is critical in a world where distractions are disguised as opportunities. It reminds us that focus isn’t just a tactic—it’s a strategy.

I often recommend this book to leaders and individuals who feel overwhelmed and are struggling to regain control of their time.

This is the book that made me a futurist! And I know many other people it has inspired as well.

The Book of the Future offered a vision of life in the year 2000 and beyond, covering cities, space, robots, medicine, farming, energy, and more, with incredible illustrations and rich information. It was my favourite book from the age of three and it has stayed with me ever since. 

When I became a professional futurist I wrote to Usborne to tell them how important this book was to me, and ten years later, they agreed to reissue it.

Read it for an optimistic view of the future from the 1970s.

People are re-evaluating work right now, and looking for something beyond the salary.

This book is one of the best guides to help you find something that might both make you money and make you happy.

It’s clear and helpful, upbeat but also very honest about what is required to turn a passion into a business.

Sometimes as a futurist, my challenge is to make people imagine a world that is very different from today. To help them look beyond the horizon. Science Fiction is great for that but novels take us into a whole other world: we replace one set of blinkers for another, descending - however pleasurably - into a fictional universe. It’s unlikely I can get my clients to read many novels to imagine many different futures. Which is where short and micro stories come in. Sometimes my clients commission me to write them, but sometimes it’s a pleasure to read them from other people. I can’t pay Adrian Hon’s collection any greater compliment than to say it reminds me of reading Asimov’s short stories and opens my mind in the same ways.

I can’t pay Adrian Hon’s collection any greater compliment than to say it reminds me of reading Asimov’s short stories… show more.

I came across Dani Shapiro’s Still Writing at a time when I believed writing to be an impossible, nay, mythical career. Like the imaginary friends from my childhood, I saw it as something I must snap out of if I was ever to find the real thing.

I loved Shapiro’s part-memoir, part-guidebook because she spoke to the true mystery and unknowingness of writing. Clarity, as she puts it, may be the main aim of our game, but it seems to fall further and further away the more we try to grasp it.

The deceptively simple language and tone of Still Writing was a timely reminder for me that, despite the difficulty, risk, vulnerability, and tumult of this discipline, writing is an indelible part of my life, which is not only possible but within my reach. 

Gutkind founded the journal Creative Nonfiction and has been a tireless advocate of the CNF genre for decades, as a writer, teacher, public speaker, and publisher. His nuts and bolts guidebook, You Can't Make This Stuff Up, offers a wide-ranging examination of the craft of writing true stories – dialogue, description, beginnings, endings, intimate detail, reflection, point-of-view, framing – as well as clear and helpful chapters about forming a writing habit and learning to live one’s life as a writer. Gutkind has generously packed decades of wisdom and knowledge into perhaps the most comprehensive nonfiction guide available.

This title is unique among books on writing in that Prose devotes a full chapter to eight critical elements of writing: words, sentences, paragraphs, narration, character, dialog, details, and gesture. For example, she explores concepts such as first sentences and their impact on the narrative. Prose suggests that “close reading” is the key to understanding and learning about literature, for the reader and writer. She takes her readers on a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters―Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov―and discusses why these writers have endured. Throughout, she cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted. One of the most important books on writing I have ever read.

To be honest, I sort of threw a dart at Lawrence Block’s books on writing and hit this one. You’d benefit from the others just as much (Write for YourLif Life, Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, The Liar’s Bible). 

Or read any of his fiction. I started down the Block path with his Matthew Scudder series, but it’s his “Burglar” books that had the greatest influence on my Eli Marks mystery series. But don’t overlook his darkly funny Keller series, about a hitman with a heart (and a love of stamp collecting). And, if you’re into audiobooks, grab any of his books that Block narrates himself. He’s pretty good at it!

The title captivated me.

Then, page by page, the content courted me with insightful and inspiring essays. I’ve read many craft books. This brilliant and eloquent gem is my absolute favorite. Chapter by chapter, Benner Dixon and McDermott’s personal essays reveal craft—not as how-to, but rather through inference, story, and metaphor.

In the chapter on memory, they speak of how memories linger, betray us, and befriend us to be better. Consciously or unconsciously, our memories influence our writing in the best of ways, as memories are held in our bodies and in our hearts. And when we write from the heart, we’re able to give life to our characters in the best possible way, even if the memories are painful.  

As with Madeleine L’Engle, everything I’ve read by Ursula K. Le Guin—fiction as well as nonfiction—has radically influenced my writing and my teaching of writing. In fact, her impact on my creative awakening was so profound that I sent her a copy of my first book as a thank you! Steering the Craft is filled with wisdom and exercises for both new and seasoned writers, but perhaps the most liberating for blocked writers is her controversial view that “story” is defined by “change” not “conflict.” That’s especially welcoming for writers who feel hemmed in (and, perhaps, blocked) by the traditional definition.