Writing About Writing About Writing 29

Part 29 of an intermittent series where I read or re-read the writing books on my shelf to see if they’re worth keeping. See previous part here and Index of all books here.

So – time to dust this off I guess. I haven’t read much since #28 so will be doing a bit of a reset. I have, though, been reblogged by Milford SF and now that I’ve come out of the fog I see that over time the ‘reviews’ of the writing books have become shorter and shorter. I should probably go back to longer reviews.

Slight detour into health status. I’ve had my initial treatment for PA and it wasn’t enough. I have to wait three months to next injection of B12 and by all accounts this 3 month periodicity is not enough for most sufferers and so I’m taking sub-lingual B12. The jury is out on that one – I had very bad fatigue last couple of days (although slightly better today). However I did climb a mountain in Scotland last week. When we set off for that walk I didn’t feel like I had enough energy to walk the two and a half miles even if they were flat (and they were far from flat). But I persevered and got a second wind from somewhere and I made it to the top. (we walked from below that forest in the distance but not quite from the town itself)

(Photo by author)

This wouldn’t be an issue for most people and during the pandemic when we were allowed outside I’d regularly go for 10-12 mile walks. A few weeks before being diagnosed I was exhausted after doing a 5 mile walk on the flat. So climbing Ben Vrackie seems like a major achievement. The fact I’ve just put together a blog post seems to indicate that my mental health is a bit better too. So I have plans but tasks seem so Sisyphyean lately.

(Picture by Chaz Hutton.)

My shelf of writing books is double-stacked (again) and I do want to get back to the writing lark, so…

They’re currently themed in:

Poetry – I have a mixed relationship with poetry, I like it and would like to write it, am a published poet in fact, but I’ve never really understood it apart from at a visceral level and I’m not sure that’s good enough. As it feels more difficult than prose I may leave it a while – try and get back into writing for a while before considering it.

Creativity – From Freud’s ‘On Creativity and the Unconscious’ to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘Creativity’ with a diversion via Howard Gardner’s ‘Art, Mind and Brain,’ I got interested in how creativity works. But these are fairly technical and dry books so I’ve been putting them off.

Process – I have a bunch of “The Way We Write” books (actual title of one of these books) that are about process.

Literature Class – I have a half dozen or so ‘How to Write’ books on the shelf still.

Stories and how they were edited – another half-dozen of the books are on revising, usually with examples.

Scriptwriting – A whole quarter of the books I’ve yet to get to are to do with writing for games, theatre and film.

Philosophy of Writing – Another quarter are on highfalutin esoterica of writing and the role of writers in society.

Miscellaneous – And then there are a few books on typography and language that are writing adjacent.

Prompts – and finally there are the prompt books.

It feels to me that I should tackle this renewed WAWAW structurally – read books on creativity first, then How To’s, then Process, Editing, Philosophy, then tackle the prompts and move on to miscellaneous and ‘other’ writing at the end.

There’s probably a year’s worth of reading on that double-stacked shelf without touching the books I’ve previously decided to keep. I’d best get to it. I am aware though that planning isn’t my forte and quite often the previous blog posts have ended on “and so I’m going to do *this*” and then I completely fail to do whatever *this* is. But anyway, line in the sand cognizant of incoming tide…

Drop a comment with your favourite writing book or tip here or email me via the Contact page. If you’re a publisher or Indie Author and would like me to review your writing book drop me a line!