On Writing No. 2: Finding Craft Books and Essays That Work For You

"Above Tower Falls, Yellowstone" by Thomas Moran

After going back to graduate school in 2017 for an MFA, I made a concerted effort to engage critically with writing from several perspectives. I wanted to learn craft, and the best way to do that—for me— is to read and then put what I read into practice. However, I did not want to limit myself to the things I’ve always enjoyed reading, which would be YA, fantasy, science fiction, and Jane Austen novels. 

My previous graduate degree in English/creative writing helped me in this regard. I was exposed to writers and literature I would never have discovered organically. I came to love realism, particularly writers like Willa Cather and George Eliot, and I found that I did not hate memoirs as much as I thought I did. Essays that I once considered too dry suddenly developed hidden oases. (I will discuss the topic of reading in more depth next month, but I need to mention this to go to the next point.) 

This change did not come overnight. I had to stretch my mind by reading about craft from multiple points of view, particularly those of writers I admire. I began with some well-known books: The Art of Memoir (Mary Karr), On Becoming a Novelist and The Art of Fiction (John Gardner), Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott), and Aspects of the Novel (E.M. Forster). 

From reading about writing, I understood that it was in questioning your work that you grew as a writer. Anyone can throw down some words on a page, but the writer then looks back at what is there and is dissatisfied. 

This realization led me to seek out writers who also questioned their writing, who were not satisfied with first drafts, and who found themselves drawn to engaging dialectically with their craft and with other writers and readers. 

I was on a quest of the type found in those novels I love. Admittedly, the stakes were not nearly as high as for Frodo Baggins or Taran the Pigkeeper, but I found it enjoyable all the same. 

On this trek, I discovered Ursula K. Le Guin’s books and essays on craft and several interviews with her, including Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing with David Naimon. I absorbed them like heat into cold flesh; they were my fire. From this place of warmth, I trailed outward, becoming a many-tentacled thing, reaching and finding (sometimes rediscovering) authors like Jorge Luis Borges because Le Guin would mention them in her essays and interviews. (I’d read Borges in undergrad and loved his short stories. The collection Labyrinths still haunts me the way good prose and a mystery that isn’t quite solved always do.) 

From craft books like these, I realized what a craft book should be. It should compel you to keep going, find more ideas and words, and dig in the shelves for another taste of inspiration. 

Books about writing need to be personally applicable and accessible. A lot of these “helpful” books are dry or too centered on teaching you how to achieve your goals in a certain amount of steps. Steps have their places, but if the author doesn’t show you how to walk those steps, then they won’t do you any good. You’ll keep tumbling back down or founder at the first few. 

I guess what I mean is that the book and the author need to speak to you on a level you know. In even simpler terms, it must be relatable. A few of those books I mentioned at the start are quite dated and very dry, a bit like reading textbooks. They contain good ideas and expert knowledge, but I found it difficult to relate to them. 

In order to wrap up this post, I’m going to provide a bibliography of some of my favorite books on writing—the ones that felt familiar and truly helped me understand my own writing. 

• Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison
• Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver
• The World Split Open: Great Authors on How and Why We Write (TinHouse Books, 2014)
• No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters (2017), Words Are My Matter: Writings on Life and Books (2019), Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places (2017), and The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (2004) by Ursula K. Le Guin (I placed Le Guin’s together because she is really quite prolific and often carries certain ideas over, such as the “wave in the mind,” between essays/collections so that her collected essays feel less like separate works and more like a larger undertaking comprised of a lifetime of experience and growth. And these are not all of the collections, just the ones I own.)
• Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose
• Writer to Writer: From Think to Ink by Gail Carson Levine (If you were obsessed with Ella Enchanted—the book—as a young person, you’ll love this book on writing.)