Fans pick 100 books like On Writers And Writing

Sent to me by a dear friend just when I needed it, this delightfully cheeky book about writing gave me the push to be courageous and truthful both in life and in my written endeavors.

Full of candid advice, hilarious anecdotes, and helpful information, this book is half manual and half a memoir of Lammott’s escapades in authorship. It speaks directly to the part of us that holds our deepest stories and silently longs to make them into something useful, beautiful, and meaningful–whether or not we plan to share them with the world. 

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.

Fifteen Minutes to Live is like a darker, more intense version of 50 First Dates. In the novel, 36-year-old Carl discovers that his high-school sweetheart, Jesse, is losing her memories of recent events every 15 minutes, compelling him to weed through a web of secrets to find out the truth about her. Carl is a genuine and relatable protagonist whose imperfections are a breath of fresh air. He’s self-deprecating with amusing quirks (like trying to befriend a raccoon), and his love for Jesse, though not always noble or logical, is fierce and moving. Likewise, Jesse manages to shine with strength and determination, despite the fact that her memory resets every 15 minutes. I’m also a fan of the intense “up against the clock” storyline, which offers great edge-of-your-seat moments.

Also super funny while pointing out the absurdity of academia. Written from the perspective of the chair of the English Department, Henry Deveraux grapples with being the underachieving son of the man who is the father of American Literary Theory.

An excerpt of Straight Man titled Dog appeared in the New Yorker many years ago, and it’s possibly the best excerpt I’ve ever read. It taught me so much about writing while keeping me riveted to every sentence, just like the overall book did.

This is, hands down, the single funniest book I have ever read. What’s amazing is that in addition, it’s really a heartfelt memoir. Harrison Scott Key can take contentious family relationships and use them to simultaneously make your heart ache and your face hurt from laughing so much. He’s also skilled at self-deprecating humor, unabashedly highlighting his own flaws throughout his story. The title refers to the author’s father and the book chronicles interactions from youth onward—all the cringe-worthy moments when a parent and child simply cannot see eye to eye (and you can tell they probably never will). And yet the undercurrent of love throughout is what brings in the heartache that balances out the hilarity. Again, this is the single funniest book I have ever read, and that should count for something! 

Carrie Fisher is a phenomenal writer whose Hollywood upbringing and career makes her insightful voice when it comes to the experience of women in film.

Turning the diaries she kept while shooting Star Wars – playing the iconic Strong Female Character, Princess Leila – into a memoir offers and eye-opening perspective about life as an actress working in a male-dominated world.

It’s full of humour, self-deprecation, and real vulnerability, as well as juicy tidbits about the production.

If you know of Gyles Brandreth, the writer, broadcaster, and polymath you will know what to expect from any work of his. Subtitled The Diary of a Lifetime it contains extracts from his diaries from 1959 to the year 2000. It is a wonderful book to dip into, one that is full of enthusiasm and positivity. It is quite amazing the number of famous people that Brandreth has encountered over the years—not just names from showbusiness but artists, writers, politicians, sportspeople, and royalty. The book is stuffed with anecdotes most of which are highly amusing and are often presented in a self-deprecating manner.

This one didn’t change my life, but it did provide me with a no-nonsense guide to pesky things like conjunctions and clauses, superlatives and synonyms, prepositions and pronouns, and, obviously, alliteration. Ha. 

What I liked most about this book is that it isn’t written like a textbook. I read what is widely considered to be the writer's bible, The Elements of Style by William Struck and E.B. White, and considered giving up on my dream of becoming a writer because the book made me feel as if only someone with an Einstein-like intellect could write. 

But, as Mr. King wrote, the story is what matters; everything else is just dressing. But in saying that, being able to string together sentences helps (I think my jokes are funny, but no one else does), and this book gives a simple explanation of how to make your copy sing.