Today’s newsletter is about some of my favorite writing books like What It Is, Bird By Bird, and Several Short Sentences About Writing:
In attempting to practice what I preach with my own “practice and suck less” challenge, I bottomed out so bad last week that I had to do that most embarrassing of things that writers occasionally have to do: I reached out for help from a writing book. (Unfortunately, my own books don’t really work on me.)
The book I reached for was new to me: Dani Shapiro’s Still Writing: The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life. I felt comforted after only a few pages. (How much more pleasant it is to read about how to write than to write!)
As I kept reading, a thought popped in my head: Every writing book is good.
Every writing book is good if it gets you to write! It doesn’t even need to be that good. In fact, it could be bad! You could be reading it and think, “Shoot, I could do better than this” or “I’d rather write than read any more of this crap.” Either way, the writing book has done its job if you put it down and head off to write.