Are you looking for books that will help you write better?
Books on writing can be a source of knowledge, inspiration, and practical strategies.
It’s like peaking into the minds’ of the world’s best writers.
In this post, I’ll cover 4 of my favourite writing books and what I learned from them.
What Books Should You Read to Improve Your Writing?
If you’re looking for book suggestions online, it can become overwhelming.
There are so many options.
Where do you begin?
Below, is a short list of the books that have helped me.
- Elements of Style
- On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
- On Writing Well
- Writing With Power
But, how does these books help your write better?
The best way is to put your lessons into practice and note down quotes that connect with you.
1. Elements of Style
The Elements of Style is a writing style guide by Willam Strunk and E.B White.
White is the author of popular books like Charlotte’s Web.
This tiny book has been around since the 1920s, and it still remains one of the most relevant writing resources.
The recommendations of the book give you practical strategies for making your writing clear and easy to understand.
You’ll find answers to common questions around rules of grammar:
- Do you struggle to determine when to use “which” vs “that”?
- Are you worried that incorrect comma usage makes your writing look sloppy?
Then there’s general advice for how to write better, like:
- Write in a way that comes naturally
- Revise and rewrite
- Write with nouns and verbs
The central themes are brevity and clarity.
Avoid bloated writing, appeals Strunk:
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”
And a key recommendation is to be clear:
“Muddiness is not merely a disturber of prose, it is also a destroyer of life, of hope: death on
the highway caused by a badly worded road sign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a
misplaced phrase in a well-intentioned letter, anguish of a traveler expecting to be met at a
railroad station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram. Think of the tragedies
that are rooted in ambiguity, and be clear! When you say something, make sure you have
said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.”
Put another way, figure out what you want and say it.
2. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
We can learn a lot about writing from Stephen King.
The man writes. He writes a lot.
But he’s only not admired because he publishes many books. He’s legendary because he’s published so many good books.
King’s book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, is split into two sections:
- A biography
- Collection of writing tips
King’s journey to becoming the icon he is today is inspiring. He wrote stories while juggling a teaching job.
And he dealt with rejection, but he just went on writing.
One of the biggest lessons I learned was to forget about waiting for inspiration.
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
The message?
Write even if you don’t feel like it.
This inspired me to come up with a writing schedule. Now, I write every day. Many times I don’t feel like writing, but once I start, I build momentum and don’t want to stop.
As with many things, the hardest part is starting.
Starting small, even if it’s just for 10 minutes a day. This approach might help ease you into a writing habit.
Another key lesson is the focus on reading:
“You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you,” writes King.
3. On Writing Well
Do you ever feel like writing is just too hard?
In On Writing Well, the brilliant William Zinsser reassures us that writing is tough for everyone:
“Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.”
Zinsser was a journalist and writing teacher at Yale.
He wrote a book about writing that sold more than 1 million copies.
And even he found writing hard.
Isn’t it comforting to know that you’re not alone if you struggle to get the words to come out just right?
The other lesson was on simplicity:
“…the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every words that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what–these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence.”
If you ever get stuck, a good tactic is to get clear on the point of your article.
“Writers must therefore constantly ask: what am I trying to say?”
After all, writing clearly is thinking clearly, said Zinsser.
“Thinking clearly is a conscious act that writers must force on themselves, as if they were working on any project that requires logic: making a shopping list of doing an algebra problem.”
4. Writing With Power
Ever struggle to get words onto the page?
You’re not alone.
In Writing With Power, Peter Elbow offers a simple remedy:
Freewriting.
Freewriting is the act of writing non-stop for 10 minutes. Elbow said it’s a way to “write without thinking”
I wrote about Elbow’s two-step writing process here.
Elbow writes:
“Freewriting makes writing easier by helping you with the root psychological or existential difficulty in writing: finding words in your head and putting them down on a blank piece of paper.”
Of course, while these books can help you, you learn best by doing.
Want to figure out how to write better?
Start by setting up a small writing habit today.
Photo by Seven Shooter on Unsplash