HOW TO WRITE A BOOK:
INSPIRING RESOURCES & WRITING GUIDANCE
SOME CLASSIC RECOMMENDATIONS
naomi rose, book developer & creative midwife
“Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” — Barbara Kingsolver
"You can make anything by writing." — C. S. Lewis
Whether you're wondering how to start writing your first book or seeking writing inspiration to complete your manuscript, these book-writing resources can help guide your creative writing process.
— a classic book on writing —
Becoming a Writer
by
Dorothea Brande
A superlative (and free) book on writing fiction.
Essential book-writing tips for strengthening your writing craft.
One of the best writing resources I know is a classic first published in 1934 called Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. A gentle, encouraging book focused on fiction-writing that simultaneously requires our commitment to our writing, it offers invaluable writing guidance.
And it helps this along by, among other things, being the first (to my knowledge) to suggest separating out the fluid, unconscious writing from the mental, analytical editorial critiquing. Too often, the analytical critic is given full rein at the beginning: a big mistake! That part of us (call it “superego” or whatever) is all too willing to find fault, the “what’s missing,” instead of letting the less orderly, more associative inner genius (call it “inner child” or whatever) have full rein. She has a process for working with this. It’s intelligent, and — if worked with — it bears fruit.
“St. Catherine Reading a Book,” by Carlo Dolci (17th century)
The contents of the book include (but are not limited to):
The Difficulty of Writing at All
Cultivating a Writer's Temperament
The Process of Story Formation
Imagination vs. Will in Changing Habits
Displacing Old Habits
Wordless DayDreams
Writing on Schedule
Reading as a Writer
Learning to See Again
The Source of Originality
Here is a quote from the Introduction:
“[The aspiring writer] may never dare to bracket himself for a moment with the immortals of writing, but the disclaimer that genius cannot be taught, which most teachers and authors seem to feel must be stated as early and abruptly as possible, is the death knell of his real hope. He had longed to hear that there was some magic about writing, and to be initiated into the brotherhood of authors. This book, I believe, will be unique; for I think he is right. I think there is such a magic, and that it is teachable. This book is about the writer’s magic.”
The book is still in print (as I say, it’s a classic) and can be bought from a bookstore or most likely found in the library. However, because it’s now in the public domain, it is available for free online.
That said, it may be worth owning your own copy, because (a) there is nothing like a book in the hand, and (b) this pdf version has some typos (!) and is not visually well designed. Nevertheless, the content is gold, and here’s a good way to encounter it.
Here is the link to the free pdf (it has typos but still worth it): Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande.
However, you might want to have your very own book-in-hand. This book is such a classic, for good reason. You may want to underline meaningful insights and suggestions. To make it a cornerstone of your writing library (again, even if you don’t write fiction Brande’s kindly wisdom still applies).
To purchase your own print copy of the book (and support independent bookstores through my Bookshop affiliate), click the button below:
Escaping into the Open
by
Elizabeth Berg
A prolific (and wonderful!) novelist’s words of wisdom and writing advice
Elizabeth Berg is a wonderful (and, deservedly, bestselling) novelist who has distilled her own writing process into words of wisdom that can help your creative spirit, well, escape into the open. I have read almost all her books, and loved almost all of them (the exception was a historical novel). One thing I love about her is her own love for her characters — even when difficult and sad things are happening to them, there is a nuanced depiction and a deep respect for them, and for life itself. Another thing I love is how comforting her books are, without being in the least bit saccharine or trite. Her books are like friends: they open the eyes and the heart, and one is left with a sense of gratitude and acceptance.
The intent to comfort is not accidental, it turns out. A former nurse prior to taking up writing as a profession, she says she was always more interested in the patients’ lives than in the technical virtuosity of nursing. I recently watched, online, a video of a reading she did at a library in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Her warmth, depth, and transparency were instantly apparent. And in an earlier interview with Writers Digest (March/April 2010), she talked about her writing process and philosophy. Here is the part I want to share with you. I agree with her completely, and am grateful she put this into print:
“If I could say anything to aspiring writers, it’s to keep your own counsel, first and foremost. There’s nothing wrong with listening to what other people have to say, and I used to be one of your readers who would gaze longingly at those pictures of people who are published and think, Oh man, what must it be like? But there is something inside of a person that makes them be a writer in the first place. That’s a strong and true thing. And you can have your head turned very easily by the business of writing. It’s so important to keep it church and state—keep it separate. The process of writing and creating and answering that very unique call inside yourself has nothing to do with agents and sales and all that stuff. I can tell you as someone who’s enjoyed a lot of success in my career that nothing matches the feeling you have when you get it right on the page, when you please yourself in that very intimate way: That’s always the best thing, no matter what happens. For me it is, anyway.
“Your mission should not be to be a bestselling author. Your mission should be to answer the call and to write in the best way you can what you need to write. First do the work, then think about where you’re going to sell it.” [my italics]
You can buy her excellent book on writing, Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True, by clicking the button below. (You will be supporting independent bookstores through my Bookshop affiliate.)
from where you dream:
THE PROCESS OF WRITING FICTION
by
Robert Olen Butler
Advanced writing techniques for fiction writing and narrative craft
It’s been some time since I first read From Where You Dream, but I can still remember the extraordinary impact — as if someone had managed to bypass my intellectual and conceptual filters and come in through a side door I hadn’t known was there. The choice of the word “dream” in the title is apt: the author’s ability to evoke (and invoke) a subterranean, associative, feeling intelligence is a gift for anyone who writes fiction. And fiction writers are the intended readership.
However — I believe that tending to this capacity in ourselves can work for nonfiction writers as well. Certainly, narrative nonfiction, which weaves together the stuff of nonfiction (“it really happened”) with a way of telling that includes one’s own life-tellings and contemplations. In Butler’s words, writers need “an intuitive command of the essentials of the process of fictional art.” Here is a moment from From Where You Dream:
“You must, to be in here [his writing classes] have the highest aspirations for yourselves as writers—the desire to create works of fiction that will endure, that reflect and articulate the deepest truth about the human condition…. As an artist, like everyone else on this planet, you encounter the world out there in your bodies, moment to moment in your senses. If you live in the moment, through your senses, your first impression certainly will be that at the heart of things is chaos…. Artists are intensely aware of the chaos implied by the moment-to-moment sensual experience of human beings on this planet. But they also, paradoxically, have an intuition that behind the chaos there is meaning: behind the flux of moment-to-moment experience there is a deep and abiding order.
“The artist shares her intuition with the philosophers, the theologians, the scientists, the psychoanalysts—there are lots of people who believe there is order in the universe—but those others embrace the understanding and expression of that order through abstractions, through ideas, through analytical thought. The artist is deeply uncomfortable with those modes of understanding and expression…. The artist cannot understand or access her vision of the world in any of those ways. The artist is comfortable only with going back to the way in which the chaos is first encountered—that is, moment to moment, through the senses. Then, selecting from that sensual moment-to-moment experience, picking out bits and pieces of it, reshaping it, she recombines it into an object that a reader in turn encounters as if it were experience itself…. Only in this way … is the artist able to express her deep intuition of order.”
Unlike Dorothea Brande, Butler’s way is not kindly and psychological; unlike Elizabeth Berg, Butler’s way is not generous and fundamentally optimistic. He is exacting, stringent, holding writers to a high standard of, you might call it, authenticity. But what he offers has the ring of truth to me. You can’t fully share an experience with anyone without embodying that experience, yourself, and thereby speaking from it. Delivering a message, putting forth an intellectual concept, writing dogma — all these ways of communication serve to get the ideas across, but not the living vibration of the experience. Butler offers a way into the more direct, not-yet-formed inner knowing prior to any attempt to communicate it — and then teaches us how to communicate it.
As one (uncredited) blurb about the book put it:
“Butler reimagines the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual, and tells writers how to achieve the dreamspace necessary for composing honest, inspired fiction. Proposing that fiction is the exploration of the human condition with yearning as its compass, Butler reinterprets the traditional tools of the craft using the dynamics of desire. Offering a direct view into the mind and craft of a literary master, From Where You Dream is an invaluable tool for the novice and experienced writer alike.”
If you want to write fiction — and, I would add, or nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, memoir, etc. — this book can bring you into contact with that place in yourself that you don’t know until you encounter it and shape it — the place that holds the promise for writing that wrests meaning from life — the place from where (in your truest longing) you dream.
my own series of books on
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
I have written a series of book-writing guides about the Creative Process that provide gentle writing-support rather than prescriptive methods. The underlying premise is that you already have the creative within you, whether you are currently aware of it or not. It’s mostly a matter of becoming conscious of it and learning how to work with your natural ways.
The following book-writing resources address different aspects of how to write a book from the inside out, with a primary focus is on who you are and what speaks to you, so that writing a book can be an outflow of the beauty and wisdom that’s in you.
These books in my “Creative Process” Series are available for your inspiration and encouragement — and to help you make writing a book from the Deeper Self a reality in your life and creative work.
— 1 —
STARTING YOUR BOOK
opens a path to finding your own path to writing a book and discovering the treasures of your true creative nature in the process.
— 2 —
AN ORGANIC APPROACH TO STRUCTURING YOUR BOOK:
A Right-Brained Alternative to Outlines
lets you say goodbye to rigid outlines and hello to a way to structure your book that lets your innate creativity flourish.
— 3 —
10 ESSENTIAL QUALITIES THAT HELP YOU WRITE A BOOK
lets you tap into essential inner qualities that help you move beyond perceived limitations so you can work with yourself rather than against yourself — so you can write your book in a way that doesn’t deplete you but instead enlarges you.
Whether you're seeking book development support or creative writing guidance, these writing resources can help you on your writing journey.
May they remind you that every published author once sat where you are now, perhaps wondering if their words mattered. If you're seeking book-writing guidance or wondering how to start writing your book, remember: yours do."
If you'd like gentle support in discovering what your book might become, I invite you to explore a Gift Session with me, or to learn more about how we might work together to honor the story or wisdom you're called to share in writing.
Thank you for reading what I have written here.
I look forward to reading what you will write.
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