Summer Reading for Writers

For anyone who enjoys Jane Austen this book is a treat - a lucid explanation of her life and times, putting her novels into context. The writer, Fay Weldon, has a deep appreciation and understanding of Austen's work, with an amusing and unsentimental point of view. But besides these Jane-ite joys, this book is a passionate defense of the art of fiction writing. Weldon, a novelist herself, really "gets" what fiction writers do and how they do it. (She's also amusing to read.)

Great stuff. But the real reason I LOVE this book and find myself re-reading it, is Weldon's riff on what she calls "The City of Invention" - the imaginary city that writers build through their writing.

Part autobiography, part writer's instruction manual, this book by the best-selling horror writer is inspirational, instructional, and, at times, a dire warning. There is a great description of how to do description and a useful explanation of a Writer's Tool Kit that needs to be read - often. King passes on lessons he's learned while writing and good advice given to him... like:

"I got a scribbled comment that changed the way I rewrote my fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this mot: "Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%. Good luck."

(My personal ratio is closer to 15%, but then, I'm not Stephen King.)

My sentimental favorite is King's description of the phone call from his agent to say that Carrie had sold. Then again, his account of his hit-and-sit-around-chatting-to-the-victim accident (King doing the bleeding) is... like something out of his own novels. Unforgetable.

You'll want to re-read Carrie, Misery, and probably several other of King's books immediately afterwards. (Misery has a lot to say about writing too.)

On Writing is a really useful book.

The book, Aspects of the Novel, was published in 1927 and grew out of a series of Clark Lectures that Forster gave at the University of Cambridge. This is old-school, exquisitely written, a master-of-English writing ON writing. A classic.

Read it for the lovely flow of language, for the scholarship, and for the shrewd workman's understanding of what makes a novel tick. Among other pearls, Forester gives a great explanation of "Story" and "Plot."

One section I love talks about how writers are less products of their times (as high school English teachers teach us with all those schools-of and influence discussions) and more a result of their in-born temperaments: "We are to visualize the English novelists not as floating down the stream [of time] ... but as seated together in a room, a circular room, a sort of British museum reading room, all writing their novels simultaneously." From here Forster compares like-minded authors, regardless of their historical period. Fascinating.

A modern classic on the writer's life and on fiction writing itself. Full of good advice. And very wise and funny about the emotional games we play with ourselves - the way we get in the way of our own work.

This little illustrated story - by the terrific Edward Gorey - REALLY understands writers. Read it after you finish your own novel! (Or before hand, so you won't think you've gone nuts... or not nuts all by yourself anyway.)

You should always have your towel. (Read The Salmon of Doubt for an explanation and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe for examples of the towel's usefulness.)

Or for all us non-mystery writers...