Writing Guides
Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
★★★★☆ | Writing | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Reading Notes
A quick, lively read. Take aways:
- Show up and do the work. Fake it til you make it.
- Studying a favorite author in depth, and then their three favorite authors, is a great way to emulate and build on their genius.
- Get away from the computer during the creative parts of the work. Grab a pen and notebook. Go outside and walk.
- Write the book you would want to read. Similar to Rilke’s advice to his young poet.
Essayism by Brian Dillon
★★★☆☆ | Writing | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Guardian Book Review
What a strange little book about essay writing coupled with the author’s lifelong suffering of loss and depression. There were some insights about essay structure and composition that I highlighted (see below), and, reeling from Connor’s death, I was somehow comforted by the author’s repeated declarations of woe. He used writing as a method to stave off his depression, which apparently worked until it didn’t.
…To Show and to Tell by Phillip Lopate
★★★☆☆ | Writing | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Advice on Essay Endings:
- Repeat a phrase or idea that was introduced earlier, like the return of a musical refrain; Often the initial setup or opening sentence will forecast the ending.
- Tweak or transform an earlier mentioned idea into something new, perhaps with a different spin.
- Introduce a new insight helped in reserve just for the occasion of the ending.
- “Readers should be left with some things to work out on their own.”
“Creative nonfiction allows the nonfiction writer to use literary techniques usually used only by fiction writers, such as scene-setting, description, dialogue, action, suspense, plot. All those things that make terrific short stories and novels allow the nonfiction writer to tell true stories in the most cinematic and dramatic way possible. That’s creative nonfiction.” — Lee Gutkind
…