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These are brilliant guides to creativity, commitment and structure – whether you intend to write yourself, or just love great writing
“Most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one,” the great short story writer Flannery O’Connor once wrote. When it comes to good writing, we can tend towards a romantic vision of it being an unexplainable, inimitable act of divine intervention. It can be inspiring – and often unpalatable – to be reminded that the best writing is more often the result of of hard and constant work.
Even if the last thing you are planning on doing in lockdown is writing a novel, here are some of the best guides on writing: how to do it, how it works and how to be inspired to start. There were plenty of books that did not make this list that I would still recommend as entertaining, stirring and useful for would-be writers, such as The Writer’s Chapbook (a collection of advice given by authors in the Paris Review, which seems to be out of print now), Tillie Olsen’s Silences (important but not stuffed with practical advice) or Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life (ditto). And as any successful writer would say, the best thing you can do to learn how to write is read, read, read. But it couldn’t hurt to try a few of the following, too. Continue reading...