Books on Writing

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

Woolf’s meditation on writing, and in particular on the line of descent in the history of women writing, continues to create the future of literature and of civilization. Essential reading for any writer, man or woman.

A Writer’s Notebook by W. Somerset Maugham

A lifelong account of the author’s progress, filled with practical and aphoristic observations on life and art. “One of the most useful discoveries I ever made was how easy it is to say: ‘I don’t know.’ ”

Art & Ardor by Cynthia Ozick

A master’s spirited essays on art and its methods and meaningfulness. “Knowledge is not made out of knowledge. Knowledge swims up from invention and imagination—from ardor.”

Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster

The great novelist’s informal lectures from the spring of 1927 at Trinity College, Cambridge, offer a survey and insights from notable works up through time. The development of the novel, Forster notes, implies the development of humanity.

Author and Agent by Michael Kreyling

In 1940, well before Eudora Welty was taken up by publishers, editors, and the reading public, an agent, Diarmuid Russell, wrote to her, expressing his admiration and understanding of her work, and so began a correspondence that traces Welty’s emergence and a thirty-year personal and professional friendship.

Not leaving immortality to chance, America’s foremost humorist forbid the publication of his autobiography until a hundred years after his death. From the grave, he continues to make fun of himself so that we may laugh with him. “My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”

Chekhov: A Spirit Set Free by V. S. Pritchett

Pritchett, a master storyteller, who came of age in the era before the existence of writing workshops, taught himself to write by reading the masters and by working as a writer across many forms. His biography of Chekhov is an appreciation by one master who learned by reading his predecessor. Without any straining for connections, Pritchett draws the line of logic and passion that connects the life to the art, how one is transformed into the other.

Letters to a Young Poet by Ranier Maria Rilke

“With nothing can one approach a work of art so little as with critical words: they always come down to more or less happy misunderstandings.” So began Rilke’s first letter to a student who’d asked for advice. A quarter century later, in 1929, the student noted in his introduction for the publication of the ten letters Rilke sent him, “Where a great and unique man speaks, small men should keep silence.” In both men modesty burns brilliantly.

Life Work by Donald Hall

Essayist, memoirist, biographer, story writer, textbook and children’s book author, and poet laureate, Donald Hall made his life and vocation one. “I’ve never worked a day in my life. I stay at home and write. Work? Work. I make my living at it.”

One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty

In her midseventies, giving a series of lectures at Harvard, Welty traveled a path from her earliest memories of the sound and sense of words to her fullest possession and accomplishment of her gifts. Like Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist, Welty’s book generously shows the gradual individuation of the artist.

Poetics by Aristotle, trans. by James Hutton

In the millennia since Aristotle analyzed the form of drama up to this time, some things have changed, but in the essence of how drama works, not much. To say a work, or a technique, is classic is simply to say that it works for all time. Aristotle’s thoughts on reversals, recognitions, beginnings, middles, endings, causality, and other aspects of storytelling are indelible, infallible guides to the art, and Hutton’s translation, unlike many abstruse translations of this short work, is very readable.

The Dyer’s Hand by W. H. Auden

The play of Auden’s mind in his essays, like the play of his verse, provides infinite pleasure. “Every work of a writer should be a first step, but this will be a false step unless, whether or not he realizes it at the time, it is also a further step.”

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Written a decade after the publication of his famous short story “Sonny’s Blues,” Baldwin’s book-length personal essay reveals the influences, thinking, and aspirations that went into the short story and into his life work. On the National Mall in Washington, DC, alongside the monument to Martin Luther King, another monument might well stand, one to James Baldwin for all he did and for all he has meant to humankind. “For while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard . . . it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.”

Turgenev: The Gentle Barbarian by V. S. Pritchett

Like Pritchett’s biography of Chekhov, this one of Turgenev twines an appreciation of the Russian master’s life and work into useful observations on every page. “In his apprenticeship the novelist learns that he must put his limitations to positive use.”

The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth

A comedy and satire on the writing life yet a profound exploration of the meaning of the Holocaust and the Diaspora and of individual and collective identity, Roth’s short coming-of-age novel is also a roman à clef, including versions of himself, Bernard Malamud, and Saul Bellow. The Malamud character, E. I. Lonoff, mordantly recounts his writing days: “I turn sentences around. That’s my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. . . .”

The Habit of Being by Flannery O’Connor

O’Connor’s letters span sixteen years, 1948 to 1964, from her advent as a young writer to the year of her death from systemic lupus erythematosus at the age of thirty-nine. Her work was so rich, so famous and celebrated, and often so misunderstood, that she, more than some writers, steadily clarified her work and her relationship to it. “The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. . . . Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it.”

The Structure of Verse, ed. by Harvey Gross

This collection of essays by preeminent twentieth-century poets, including Eliot, Pound, Roethke, and many others presents a study of prosody equally invaluable for poets and prose writers. In an interview with Gross, Stanley Kunitz notes, “A line to me is very much a time unit. . . . I like a poem that rides the beast of an action.”

Tolstoy’s Diaries 1847–1910, ed. by R. F. Christian

From the age of eighteen until his death, Tolstoy kept a diary detailed with observations on himself, others, and all of life. His growth and development, his desire for honesty, his care for others, his conclusions, self-doubts, and struggles informed his works. “I’m doing nothing and thinking about the landlady,” he writes. “Do I have the talent to compare with our modern Russian writers? Decidedly not.”

Woman Writer: Occasions and Opportunities
by Joyce Carol Oates

Poet, story writer, novelist, essayist, journalist, editor, publisher, teacher, Oates is as close as we have to a Virginia Woolf today, and along with Philip Roth, gets our vote as deserving a Nobel. Her essays illuminate the core of the twentieth century and the writer’s place and work within any time.

The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri

Character is all, Egri affirms in his 1946 classic. Drama depends on people, their relationships and motivations. Skillful dramatic structure focuses premise, character, and conflict to engage the human heart.

True Perception: The Path of Dharma Art by Chögyam Trungpa

Buddhist scholar Chögyam Trungpa offers his treatise on art-making and self-discovery. Patient pursuit of the greater Self brings a reward of authenticity and the power to awaken and liberate others through art.

Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck

An uncompromising peek into the daily life of John Steinbeck while he was writing The Grapes of Wrath, filled with moments of unrelenting determination, bursts of high creativity, and near crippling bouts of self-doubt.

A Poet’s Glossary by Edward Hirsch

Not just a dictionary, this book, full of poetry excerpts and poet profiles, is an intense inquiry into the many traditions—oral and written—of poetry, the “small devices and large mysteries,” as Hirsch puts it. The author reminds us whose coattails we all ride on, and have been riding on for centuries, in our writing and in our enjoyment of the form of poetry.

Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen
by Mary Norris

Norris, who worked as a copyeditor at The New Yorker for thirty-five years, recounts her experiences working with writers. Incisive, charming, she can get apoplectic over the misuse of apostrophes and devotes an entire chapter, “Comma, comma, comma, comma, chameleon,” to that most pervasive and useful punctuation mark.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
by Annie Lamott

In her hugely popular primer, Lamott offers perhaps the most valuable writing advice: “For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts. The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place.” Lamott’s colloquial, compassionate encouragement has helped myriad writers find their way.

Fowler’s Modern English Usage, ed. by R. W. Burchfield

Many editors and writers pick up this 1926 primer when in the mood for some grammatical reinforcement: “The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; and (5) those who know and distinguish. [But] those who neither know nor care are the vast majority, and are a happy folk, to be envied by the minority classes.” Drollery aside, Fowler provides timeless principles for stripping away artificiality and stuffiness in prose.

Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew
by Ursula K. Le Guin

“There’s luck in art. And there’s the gift. You can’t earn that. But you can learn skill . . . you can learn to deserve your gift.” Le Guin focuses on skill, using lots of worthwhile exercises that build on one another. She discusses the sound of language and how grammar and punctuation exist to assist sound, which is at the essence of storytelling.

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

Detailing the introspection necessary for wringing the truth out of a life, Karr conveys what a writer must go through in pursuit of a memoir. With compassion, hilarity, and self-deprecation, she reveals her writing process.

Now in its seventeenth edition, this book is a bible for many editors and writers. The CMS is an authoritative guide on everything from the proper fonts to use in mathematical notation to when to use scare quotes and how to make names like Euripides possessive. We base Narrative’s style guide on CMS. And now that’s it’s online, it’s easy to access and use.

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White

This little book is a classic, and for good reason. It offers the most valuable advice to writers—“make every word tell”—and contains the best-ever example of a participial phrase that does not refer its grammatical subject: “Being in a dilapidated condition, I was able to buy the house very cheap.” Our in-house copies are stained, dog-eared, and beloved.

The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide by Robert Pinsky

“The medium of poetry is the human body: the column of air inside the chest, shaped into signifying sounds in the larynx and the mouth. In this sense, poetry is as physical or bodily an art as dancing.” Pinksy’s guide to appreciating poetry is equally relevant to appreciating prose.

Photographers on Photography, ed. by Nathan Lyons

Reading the aesthetic principles put forth by the greats in various media can be as useful as studying the aesthetics of writers. Collected here are essays by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Paul Strand, and many others, on what it means to see clearly and produce meaningful art.

Poetry and Ambition by Donald Hall

Amid a proliferation of manuscripts being sent out into the world in hopes of publication, Donald Hall surveys contemporary literary conditions and invokes a timeless pursuit. “I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems.”