056: 3 Books to Read About Writing
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3 books to read about writing
Hello, and welcome to the podcast, I'm excited to share with you three books that have been super impactful for me on my writing journey. Yeah, there are so many books about writing. And instead of doing a just general episode, where I give you like 15 books on the craft of writing that you can, you know, that you can read, I thought I would just give you three that I think are very powerful and have had a big impact on me personally, in different ways. These three books that I'm going to share with you are very different. But they've had a very big impact on me as a person and as a writer, so I wanted to share them.
Okay, first up, we have probably the most well known book. If you are familiar with books about writing, you've probably read this one or heard of it. Stephen King's on writing. This was huge for me, I read this book maybe 12 years ago, 13 years ago, something like that. Before I actually started writing, like years before I started writing, I read this book, it was recommended to me by a friend, who I don't even think she was necessarily a big Stephen King fan. But for whatever reason, she had a copy. And she loaned it to me and I read it. And I had not ever read a book about writing before that was the gateway. For me, that was the gateway drug as far as writing books. And on writing is a craft book. But it's also a memoir. It's this really interesting hybrid. I didn't know a lot about Stephen King, I think at that time, I hadn't read any Stephen King. And I've only ever read one Stephen King book. I'm not a huge fan. Now, not for any reason. I just Yeah, I just haven't read a lot of his work.
But it was so it was so fascinating to me to read him talking about writing in a way that was completely new to me. And just hearing his routine, hearing how much he writes, hearing the fact that he said right with the door closed. I mean, that was all groundbreaking to me, because I never heard it before. And I also really enjoyed the fact that he talked about kind of his recovery a bit. I mean, it's been so long since I've read the book, it's been so many years. I actually read it again when I did start writing maybe four years ago or something. But he talks about how he basically gave up drugs and alcohol. In the somewhere in the writing process, he realized it was hurting his writing as opposed to helping it.
I found that really interesting, just on a personal level. He's been sober now for decades. So yeah, if you're looking for a craft book that also has a memoir and talks about someone's career, someone's writing career who is massively successful, and has written so many books, I recommend it.
The next book that I want to share with you is gonna get the full title here. Craft in the real world rethinking fiction writing and workshopping. And it's by this author, Matthew Salesses, I believe that's how to say his name Matthew Salesses, is a Korean adoptee and he's a he's got a few books that he's written. You can find his writing all over. He's really well known. He's written for a lot of prestigious publications. And he wrote this book about rethinking writing workshops. The idea of workshopping is a big component of MFA programs. I don't have an MFA in creative writing. But I know lots of writers who do about half of my writing group, the people in there do have MFAs. And this is something that we've talked about a lot.
This is also how sort of how we run our writing group, the writing group that I'm part of, and this is also something that I've been exposed to in writing workshops that I've taken at, you know, different literary centers where there there are classes, where part of the workshop or part of the class is to submit pages and you get feedback from other people on those pages. And there's there's there was so much that was interesting. To me in this book about Matthew's experience as a Korean man in writing workshops that are overwhelmingly white, like astonishingly white, and not very diverse at all.
So the idea of a writing workshop where you're submitting pages to people to get feedback, if 90% or 95% of those people are white, 95% of them are straight and cisgender. And able bodied and have all of this privilege, what kinds of feedback are they going to be giving to writers of color writers who have some kind of marginalized identity, it's really, it was really eye opening for me to hear about some of his experiences and experiences in the book about just unconscious bias, all the way to like actual overt racism that is shared in the book. And it's just, it's heartbreaking. So, for me, this was something that I decided to really be paying attention to, when I give feedback to people. If I'm ever working with a client who is, you know, writer of color or something like, I have to recognize that I have a bias, that I am a white cis woman who is reading these stories of people who have vastly different lived experiences than I do, whether it's nonfiction or fiction, it doesn't matter.
This is something I just tried to be mindful of when I'm getting getting giving feedback to people. And it was really just a call to action about like, Hey, this is an extremely white industry. And all of these creative work writing workshops are extremely white, and everyone kind of being funneled through these MFA programs is mostly white. And that affects the kinds of stories that are being told it affects the kinds of stories that are being published. So I think it's an important conversation. And it was just a really, really well written book, as well. So definitely recommend that.
Okay, the third book I want to share about is a book by Courtney mom. That's called before and after the book deal, a writer's guide to finishing, publishing, promoting and surviving your first book, this is a really, really fascinating look at the industry of writing. It's not so much a craft book, it's more. Okay, how do you finish this book that you've started? And what do you do with it next, there's a lot of good information and good insights about traditional publishing. A lot of very successful authors appear in the book, and they weigh in on their experience and give advice, advice and stuff like that. And so it's just a really good insight into traditional publishing, which is kind of murky and mysterious. And there's not always a great level of transparency to how things are done.
There's also a little bit of information about advances, MFA programs. You know, reviews, there's just a lot of practical tips for okay, what happens when the book is done? What, what's next? I read this, I believe, I'm trying to think of exactly when I read it, I think it was, I'd signed with my first agent, and we were about to go on submission, which going in submission means that you have worked with your agent and polished the book and you feel like it's good to go, it's ready. And you send it out to editors at different publishing houses. And that's called being on submission. And it is incredibly nerve wracking and stressful. And there's not a lot of information about what that's like, what happens on submission. So I found it helpful, just for that perspective. Because I had signed with an agent, I kind of knew what to expect from that experience, but I didn't know what to expect next. And there's some there's a lot of information out there about signing with an agent, because obviously, that's the first step. But then it's like, well, what next? What happens after that? And I for me, I didn't really know, okay, well, if I get a book deal, then what then what happens?
It was very helpful. And I would say somewhat reassuring, to me to read it at that time. If you are someone who is considering traditional publishing or who is querying or kind of going down that road now, I definitely recommend it just to get some more insight into this process and what it looks like. For that reason I found it very, very helpful. This is something that I've resolved in my own publishing journey, that I want to be as transparent as possible because there's so much mystery around how things work and of course it's it's different at different houses and with different agencies and different writers. You know, there's no like one size fits all thing.
Everyone has a different experience, but I at least want to do my part through the podcast and through my social media, like as much as I can. I want to share with y'all where I'm at in the process. What's going on what the experience is like? Because, yeah, there's just there's not a lot of transparency or I think it's getting better now there's just not as much as there could be. So. And even if you are considering self publishing or you know that you want to self publish, it still might be interesting, just again, to get some answers about what the other path is like and the discussions about MFA programs or getting feedback, you know, those things are interesting and relevant. No matter what publishing road you decide to go down. So those are the three that I narrowed my list down to those three that have been very helpful for me and had a big impact on me in some way. Thank you so much for listening. I will put the links for all of the books in the description of this episode, so you can check them out if you'd like. See you next week.