Books like On Writers And Writing — picked by fans

The author’s charming and disarming Lamott-isms (“bird by bird” as a way to describe baby steps; “sh**tty rough drafts” as a way to forgive ourselves for writing imperfectly; pretending the inner critic is a mouse in a jar, then turning down its volume) give writers the permission to be, simply, human.

A classic, warm book that always brings me back to the page.

Talking of voice, finding your writer’s voice lies in the confidence that comes from effort and application. Alvarez was a poet, writer, critic, and poetry editor at The Observer newspaper in the 1960s, where he nourished the writing of Sylvia Plath and others. When you think of your favourite writers it’s usually their voice that grabs and sustains interest and trying to figure out your own, as a writer, can take time. Playing with other voices, trying them on for size, making one your own, is something Alvarez explores through his own insights about the work of Plath, Yeats, Jean Rhys, Freud, and others.

“It sounds like a simple thing, to say what you see.” So begins the poet Doty’s short book on the art of description. The art of something implies subtlety and skill, and Doty explores ideas around uncertainty, figuration, attentiveness, and those habits of conscious observation and specificity that improve description. If this sounds dull it is not, because there’s a subjectivity about Doty’s own prose that draws you in. What’s more (and I’m going to cheat a little here) if it turns out that you love Doty’s prose as I do, there’s another book by him, Still Life With Oysters and Lemon about the painting by Jan Davidz de Heem on view at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, that will enchant you further.

Even if you don’t want to be a poet, there’s something about playing with poetic form that I think is useful to any writer because it enables you to explore the use of rhythm, metaphor, simile and other ways of honing your consciousness into literary and written form. It demands specificity of description and uniqueness of voice, and Kate Clanchy’s book - she is herself a published poet, writer but also a teacher - gets to the nub of it through examples and exercise, to emerge a more fluent and confident writer, and in whichever form you choose.

Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, is brutally honest, deftly observant, and at times frighteningly visceral.

The skill with which he brings a bad ear appointment or the eating of too many eggs to life is a reminder to me that to be a writer doesn’t mean to live as a celebrity. It means to take the mundane pieces of an ordinary life and invest them with purpose and excitement.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book because it allowed me to look at my life, at my weird relationship with eggs, and my tendency to sing out loud in shopping malls, as the very essence of my next story.

Equally compelling were the snippets of writing advice layered into King’s story, another reminder that advice, as well as inspiration, can be found just about anywhere. 

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. 

What I love about Lee Koffman’s intimate writing memoir is her encouragement and support of the notion that all writers have a different method and that you must find your own tips and tricks to get through the writing practice.

As a high-achieving student, thinker, and writer, I was mortified in classrooms to find that I didn’t have quick answers for things. With time, I came up with something great, but on the spot, I was an inarticulate, floundering mess.

Koffman taught me that truthfulness can not only be found in what you write but in how you do it. I learnt to accept the way my mind worked and realised that in combining the content and the method, you can create something great. 

The Cry of the Lake was published in 2020, the same year as my book, and around that time, I had gotten to know many authors, including Charlie.

From the first line, I was drawn into the story which is told with impeccable detail, its characters clearly defined to create the dark and mysterious tale.  

Daphne has numerous elements that I particularly adore in a story: a classic writer as a character, an English manor house setting, and a mystery. Layer in a Brontë connection, and it’s a perfectly pleasing literary page-turner. In 1957, Daphne du Maurier is at her remote, seaside mansion in Cornwall, distracting herself from personal woes by researching a biography about Branwell Brontë, reprobate and possibly misunderstood brother of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Intertwined is a second storyline set in present-day London, as a lonely young woman, newly married to a mysterious older man seemingly still in thrall to his first wife, becomes caught up in a fifty-year-old mystery involving du Maurier and the Brontës. 

Elizabeth Berg wanted to read a novel about George Sand but couldn’t find one…and so she wrote it herself. In The Dream Lover, Berg unfolds the story of Aurore Dupin, who boldly left a loveless aristocratic marriage to make her own way in 19th-century Paris. She adopts the pen name George Sand and becomes France’s bestselling female novelist, living a bohemian lifestyle and scandalizing society by having high-profile love affairs and, even more outrageously, by dressing in men’s clothing. I love stories about trailblazing women, and Berg compellingly conveys how risky and courageous Sand’s actions were at a time when women had few rights.