I had so many conversations about books this weekend, and even ordered 3 while at the retreat. Some asked me exactly what multigenre writing was, and the best text to understand that is Tom Romano's Blending Genre, Altering Style. Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird will bring me out of writing doldrums, and a memoir/ narrative called The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere by Debra Marquart is a book I read and reread in order to be reminded how important stories are. Plus, she's really good at participles :). Sherri
A lot of my favorites, or ones that people I know have recommended often, can be found in a list here.
However, as a writer I especially enjoy Clearing the Way (Romano), The Elements of Style (Strunk, et. al.), On Writing Well (Zinsser), and The Craft of Revision (Murray); for my classroom, Writing Reminders (Burke) has been really useful.
My current favorites are Page After Page and Chapter After Chapter-both are by Heather Sellers.Another good one is Making a Literary Life by Carolyn See.
Bird by Bird has long been a favorite of my first year writers. One said that she found Lamott more interesting than Shakespeare. Some of my other favorites include "Making Sense, a Guide for Readers and Writers" by Al Starr and Donna McKusick, "Starting From Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual" by Rita Mae Brown, "The Tao of Teaching" by Grreta Nagel, "The Right to Write, An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life" by Julia Cameron, "Lapsing Into a Comma, a Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print - and How to Avoid them", by Bill Walsh, "Writing as a Second Language, from Experience to story to prose" by Donald Davis, "One Continuous Mistake, Four Noble Truths for Writers", by Gail Sher, anything by William Zinsser, but especially "Writing to Learn", and anything by Donald Murray, especially "The Craft of Revision." And the list goes on and on. The trouble with reading books about writing is that you spend your time reading rather than writing. Does writing on the blog count as part of our 100 minutes? It's getting close to the end of the week. are we ready for a tally? Beth
Bird by Bird is my favorite book about writing--her advice always helps when I'm faced with writers block. I also like Stephen King's book on writing and Eudora Welty's, too
What a great list! Thanks! But I'm probably like a lot of you--pleasantly distracted by excellent books ABOUT writing, which keep me from getting to it myself. Still, I love this list. Sherri
8 comments:
I had so many conversations about books this weekend, and even ordered 3 while at the retreat. Some asked me exactly what multigenre writing was, and the best text to understand that is Tom Romano's Blending Genre, Altering Style. Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird will bring me out of writing doldrums, and a memoir/ narrative called The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere by Debra Marquart is a book I read and reread in order to be reminded how important stories are. Plus, she's really good at participles :).
Sherri
A lot of my favorites, or ones that people I know have recommended often, can be found in a list here.
However, as a writer I especially enjoy Clearing the Way (Romano), The Elements of Style (Strunk, et. al.), On Writing Well (Zinsser), and The Craft of Revision (Murray); for my classroom, Writing Reminders (Burke) has been really useful.
This is really useful- I am always looking for new books to read. I'll definetely check some of these out - Thanks!
Hi All,
My current favorites are Page After Page and Chapter After Chapter-both are by Heather Sellers.Another good one is Making a Literary Life by Carolyn See.
Bird by Bird has long been a favorite of my first year writers. One said that she found Lamott more interesting than Shakespeare. Some of my other favorites include "Making Sense, a Guide for Readers and Writers" by Al Starr and Donna McKusick,
"Starting From Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual" by Rita Mae Brown,
"The Tao of Teaching" by Grreta Nagel,
"The Right to Write, An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life" by Julia Cameron,
"Lapsing Into a Comma, a Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print - and How to Avoid them", by Bill Walsh,
"Writing as a Second Language, from Experience to story to prose" by Donald Davis,
"One Continuous Mistake, Four Noble Truths for Writers", by Gail Sher,
anything by William Zinsser, but especially "Writing to Learn",
and anything by Donald Murray, especially "The Craft of Revision."
And the list goes on and on. The trouble with reading books about writing is that you spend your time reading rather than writing. Does writing on the blog count as part of our 100 minutes? It's getting close to the end of the week. are we ready for a tally? Beth
Bird by Bird is my favorite book about writing--her advice always helps when I'm faced with writers block. I also like Stephen King's book on writing and Eudora Welty's, too
What a great list! Thanks! But I'm probably like a lot of you--pleasantly distracted by excellent books ABOUT writing, which keep me from getting to it myself. Still, I love this list.
Sherri
Hi everybody,
I really like Bruce Ballenger's The Curious Researcher for excellent, self-reflexive inquiry-based exercises to use in the class room.
I hope you're all well!
Jennifer
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