Writers writing about writers…

Writers are ‘not supposed to’ write about writing. The risk is, I think, that we’d end up with an awful lot of novels about… people trying to write novels… about people trying to write novels… about people trying to… well, you get the idea.

That being said, I think writers love reading about writers – or at least I do. Here are some of my YA favourites:

In The Sky Is Everywhere, which is a gorgeous, gorgeous book that everyone should read, the recently-bereaved Lennie writes poems and scatters them around town. In Hard Love, the focus is on zines – the narrator and his love interest (who returns in Love and Lies: Marisol’s Story – an equally superb book) express themselves and their various family issues through the stories and poems and scripts and other bits and pieces they include in their zines. And A Field Guide For Heartbreakers is set on a summer creative writing programme in Prague, and is delightful in many ways.

On the adult side of things, The Popularity Rules features spiky music journalist Kat as its heroine, while One Day has Emma, who ends up writing a teen series (I adore Emma). Thinks alternates between a cognitive psychologist and a novelist in its narration, and has some brilliant parodies in there too (‘What Is It Like To Be A Bat?’ in the style of Salman Rushdie). The Bell Jar is of course writerly, though depressing. And finally Wonder Boys, which is one of my very favouritest books of all time and features a whole bunch of writers, with varying levels of absurdity, over the course of one zany weekend.

And now I am curious and must ask (always at the risk of increasing the To Be Read pile or even the Oh I Must Reread That Actually list): what are your favourite books about writers? Do tell.