Books on The Writing Life

Carolyn See‘s Friday book review in the Washington Post begins with an list of books which some blog reader may find of interest.

Books on the writing process come around as regularly as sermons on Sunday. On my own shelves — and this is far from a definitive collection — I find “Aspects of the Novel” by E.M. Forster, “Your Life as Story” by Tristine Rainer, “Writing From the Inside Out” by Dennis Palumbo, “If You Want to Write” by Brenda Ueland, “The Writer on Her Work,” by Janet Sternburg, Anne Lamott’s wonderful “Bird by Bird,” “Writing for Your Life,” an encyclopedic collection of Publishers Weekly interviews by the radiantly competent and sensitive Sybil Steinberg, “Writing Out the Storm,” a marvelous work on writing through illness by Barbara Abercrombie, “Before We Get Started” by Bret Lott (which got roundly roasted by Jonathan Yardley in these pages), “Pen on Fire” by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett and my own personal favorite, “Making a Literary Life” by a certain Carolyn See (which, however, was dismissed by Sven Birkerts in the Los Angeles Times as “mere commerce”).

She goes on to review From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler. In short, the book is ignorable. Of course, there is room for disagreement. I’m looking forward to Bret Lott’s book myself.

1 Comment

  1. I came across a great book many years ago: Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’amour.
    I’ve never read any of his fiction but this is a great memoir. L’amour was a merchant seaman for many years, a professional boxer and during WW2 an army officer. This book tells of these adventures as well as his intellectual adventures with books.

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