To be a writer, one must also read

I’m always amazed by writers who insist they don’t have time to read, or even boast that they refuse to read, so as to not sully their creativity with *checks notes* words.

While most articles on this topic discuss the importance of reading in your genre and outside of it, learning more from every word you read, there is another aspect: reading books about writing. Yes, we all go a little crazy consuming “how to” books — Writer’s Digest has an entire cottage industry based on it. A lot of writing manuals are barely worth the paper they’re printed on, offering sneaky tricks that lead to bad prose and giving the illusion of an easy path.

There’s nothing easy about writing.

But some books really speak to the writer’s soul, and usually those are inextricably entwined with the author’s life and how life and work tie together and complement each other. ’Tis the season for New Year’s resolutions, and since many times those who have fallen off the horse resolve to “get back to writing,” I thought it would be a good topic to kick off the new year.

Those I have read and found inspiring, with the caveat that some I read long ago, in case your New Year’s Resolution was to start or resume writing:

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
On Writing by Stephen King
The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses

The Welty, by the way, was a gift from my father, who became convinced long before I was that my “first best destiny” was as a writer. I, of course, was completely convinced otherwise, because you have to be a) from New York City, b) part of an extended literary family or c) otherwise have Dumbo’s magic feather in order to be a writer. Naturally I learned otherwise, far too many years later. I have long planned to reread the Welty and Goldberg with post-MFA eyes to see what lessons they taught that I missed as a young woman. The others, excepting King, were all part of my MFA studies and I found them very helpful.

King, of course, has been a reread staple for me for many years. It is both…