January 26, 2006
My oldest son wants to be a writer. He's 12. This week he had a project due in school about careers, and he did a poster on writing, and he needed some clip art, so we went to Amazon.com and printed up book covers for several books on writing and Islands magazine, etc. We tripped across Stephen King's On Writing and Ian said, "He has a book on writing?" "Oh yeah," says me, "I've got that one. I've got a bunch of books on writing." So I thought that might make a good blog entry, so I just pulled all my how-to books on writing and realize I have many more than I thought I did. Here they are, with a comment or so.

Make Your Words Work by Gary Provost. By far the best book I've read about the nuts and bolts of writing--not selling or marketing, but writing--and I think it should be on every writer's shelf.

Writers Market. This is the 2005 edition and I've now gone totally to the online version.

The Associated Press Stylebook.

The WEll-Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman. Recommended for his attitude, if nothing else, which is--you can do this and you deserve to be paid well for it.

Jump Start Your Book Sales by Ross. Okay.

The Elements of Mystery Fiction by William Tapply. Quite good.

Secrets of a Freelance Writer by Bob Bly. If you read the Bowerman, you don't need this book and vice versa. All about copywriting.

How to become a Fulltime Freelance Writer by Banks. Really, really excellent look at the freelancer's life and some serious considerations about the financial problems that may come along.

Write the Perfect Book Proposal. A bit repetitive, but if you have any thoughts of writing nonfiction books, this by Herman, a couple of agents, gives you an outline of what's in a book proposal followed by 10 successful book proposals they sold and what they thought worked and didn't in each.

Telling Lies for Fun & Profit by Lawrence Block. Also, Spider, Spin Me a Web by Lawrence Block. Essentially collections of his Writers Digest fiction columns. Decent on nuts and bolts, but wonderfully inspiring and entertaining about the thought processes and emotional and psychological obstacles a writer's likely to encounter.

SPeaking of Murder. Interviews with Masters of Mystery and Suspense. Edited by Ed Gorman and Martin Greenberg. Seems to me these were great.

The Elements of Screenwriting by Irwin Blacker. A slim book that provides basics. I wouldn't recommend it as the only book you get if you're interested in screenwriting.

Strunk and White: The Elements of Styles. Of course.

Writers on Writing, edited by Winokur.

Stephen King: On Writing. Great memoir, so-so for nuts and bolts of writing, but very entertaining.

How to get Happily Published by Applebaum. More for self-publishing people, but a worthwhile read.

How to Write A Mystery by Larry Beinhart. I picked this up at the bookstore, sat down and got so engrossed in it I bought it. Highly recommended.

Intent to Sell by Jeffery Marks. Focuses on marketing and selling genre fiction. Jeff's a mystery author with an MBA in marketing and an education degree. This is a complicated book for me to recommend. There isn't a single untrue word, it's very useful, and I've read it twice. Both times the book pissed me off. Why? Because the focus is entirely on the book as product and nowhere is there thought or consideration to quality of writing. It's entirely about selling, which is fine, that's what it's about. Jeff's a friend and I recommend the book, but it does piss me of just sort of on principle.

Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing by David Morrell. Now, Morrell is one of my favorite thriller authors, and much of this book is wonderful. I think he's largely wrong with his opinions about first-person narratives, and other aspects of this book ticked me off when I read it, but I recently re-read what he had to say about viewpoint when I was struggling with it and thought he was spot-on. This is an excellent book.

Writing Mysteries, edited by Sue Grafton. Filled with all sorts of good stuff by well-known mystery and suspense authors.

Writing the Mystery by G. Miki Hayden.

The Freelance Success Book by Taylor. Good, if repetitive.

Six-Figure Freelancing by James-Enger. I liked it. I doubt I'll hit those numbers unless I get a big hit from one of my books, but I picked up some useful information regarding reprints and contracts and, like the BOwerman book, there's a lot to be said about putting a value on your work.

I've also got a number of reference books like A Dictionary of Genetics and a book on poisons, etc., but these are the primary books on writing decorating my shelf.

They're all reasonably useful but the best way to get better at writing is to write and pay attention to what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong and trying to figure out how to tell.

Best,
Mark Terry