Books About Writing
Books to help you write (or procrastinate) better, as recommended by Wild Writers' members
The Writing Life - Annie Dillard* (Recommended by Anna Welch)
Annie Dillard is one of the great prose writers of the 20th Century. If you want a guide to writing that is an essay in itself, rich and poetic, there a few better places to start than The Writing Life.
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott* (Recommended by Anna Welch)
Anne Lamott is the champion of the messy first draft, of being comfortable with the uncertainty of the process and learning to take your time with it. She views stagnation in writing not as writers’ block, but as emptiness, suggesting that the key to writing is not in re-hashing it in your head, but out there, in the experiences of the world.
On Writing Well - William Zinsser* (Recommended by Anna Welch)
Dreams Must Explain Themselves - Ursula K Le Guin (Recommended by Kirsty Fox)
Le Guin is always so eloquent in her opinions and explanations. This book collects talks and essays she wrote on narrative, world building, eco-feminism, and literary criticism, with her trademark wit and insight.
On Writers and Writing - Margaret Atwood (Recommended by Kirsty Fox)
In this collection of shorts essays, Atwood explores the role of writers in history and the present investigating why we write and the tools we use to do so.
First You Write a Sentence - Joe Moran (Recommended by Kirsty Fox)
Moran’s book is the best I’ve ever read on the nuts and bolts of writing. Of how we turn words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, of how cadence and rhythm function and why certain collections of words work and others fall flat.
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Wild Writers, if you would like to add a recommendation to this list, please message me with the book title, ISBN, and an affiliate link if you have one. Optional: a brief comment about the book or why you recommend it.