What I Learned by Sleeping Around (With My Favorite Books)
A guide to recommended writing craft books and my list of literary magnificence
The ultimate literary superpower in every successful writer’s life is simply this: Read like a writer.
Read wide and deep. Read, love, read, love again.
On The Resilient Writer podcast with Rhonda Davis, I say I read promiscuously. More about my free-spirited literary life, coming up! Read on.
I believe in reading books that are like the book you want to write.
At the same time, always be reading a craft book.
At any given time, I have two “reads” in progress on the genre I’m working in, whether that’s fiction, memoir, essays or short stories.
And I always have a craft book “read” running in the background.
Below, I offer you my Recommended Craft Books and my Recommended Books for Literary Magnificence.
Plan to Be a Published Author: Make a Strategic Reading List
Each semester, as I worked through my MFA in Writing at Spalding University, I would file a Reading Like a Writer plan with my mentor.
I do this now with my author clients when we enter into a coaching plan.
For a guide to the packages I offer, both one-on-one and group coaching, go to https://www.carolynflynn.com/work-with-me/. To book a free discovery call with me, go to https://calendly.com/carolyn-777/30min-free-find-out-more
To start your own Reading Like a Writer list, I offer my recommended list of craft books AND books that showcase literary skills.
To make your own list, suited to your project, choose:
Books that are similar in theme and subject matter. (Love, loss, regret, memory, adventure, betrayal, coming-of-age, divorce, illness, grief, faith and so on.) Choose a book that broke open new territory for you and emboldened you to strike out.
Books that use the point of view you’re using—first person, third person limited, omniscient. This is one of my hard-and-fast rules. If I’m writing a novel in third person, I choose novels in third person. If I’m writing a memoir in first person, I read novels and memoirs in first person. Point of view is one of the most important decisions you’ll make about writing your book.
Books that have a similar structure, such as a novel with one narrator, a novel with multiple narrators, a narrative memoir that reads like a novel or film, a teaching memoir that uses the art of the teaching story or ring of stories (one of my favorite genres). If you’re writing a narrative drawing from the classic hero’s journey or Save the Cat! For the Novel with 15 beats, read a book like that. If you’re writing a Meander, Spiral, Explode narrative, read a book like that.
BOUNDLESS, A STORY WITH TWO STRUCTURES
Somehow, readers of Boundless, my tragicomic empty-nest memoir, have seen both structures in that book—the hero’s journey story that satisfies our sense of story (Lisa Cron backs that up with her TED talk and her Wired for Story craft book, which is listed below) and the feminine weaving of an interconnected tapestry that is a meander-spiral-explode approach.
Which was exactly what I was going for…
BOUNDLESS, NOW AVAILABLE AS AN AUDIOBOOK
To order Boundless, go here: https://www.carolynflynn.com/boundless/ It’s available as an audiobook now on 115 platforms (including Audible).
Books that have a similar narrator in tone, or if you’re writing with multiple narrators, a similar array of tones (so you can sharpen the distinctions between narrators by seeing how someone else did it).
Books that have a similar time span. If you’re writing epic (think Tolstoy), then read Anna Karenina. If you’re writing in a compressed time frame, think Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.
Books that have a similar approach to setting. Is it set all in one place? Do we leap to new places? Is the setting broad and expansive, or is it small (like Room)?
Books that build characters—one great memorable character who can carry everything, like Agnes in Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet or seven great characters who tell a larger story together, like Richard Powers’ The Overstory.
Books that really shine with dialogue or description. That’s just about any Colum McCann book.
Books whose language delights you. Also, Colum McCann.
A Guide to Promiscuous Reading: Notes from a Book Slut
Certainly, always be faithful to your spouse. I highly recommend it.
But you absolutely have my permission to be a book slut.
Some of my author clients hesitate to read much while they are in the throes of writing their books, but I don’t think that’s a wise course at all. It’s a plan for deprivation. And, worse, dare I say it out loud—writer’s block.
There are two great ways to learn how to write a book:
Write it, and let it train you. Jennifer Haigh (Rabbit Moon, Heat & Light)says that’s what she does with each novel she writes.
Read like a writer. It’s like you’re reading a training manual. By reading more than one—many—over the course of writing your book, you’re discovering there are a million ways to get there.
Some writers fear reading a book while they are writing their book because they are afraid that book will influence them too much. (And then long sad years roll by without reading a book…)
Is writing contagious? Actually, a little bit. But always in a good way.
Trust that you won’t contaminate your vision for your book with other people’s words. You’re not writing to be someone else. You’re writing to be yourself.
As I told Rhonda on The Resilient Writer, if you’re only going to read one book, perhaps you are risking too much contamination. So, the cure: Don’t read just one book!
And always remember that all the best books—the ones that are timeless and richly textured—are always talking to each other. Think Hamnet. Think Ahab’s Wife.
Your book will be better for having talked to all those other books!
On the way, you’ll become not just a master, but a genius. An author.
RECOMMENDED CRAFT BOOKS
MEMOIR CRAFT
The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr
Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir, Lisa Lenard-Cook and Lynne C. Miller
*The Art of Time in Memoir, Sven Birketts
Why We Write About Ourselves, compiled by Meredith Maran, includes Jesmyn Ward, Darin Strauss, Cheryl Strayed, Ayelet Waldman, Meghan Daum, Edwidge Danticat, David Sheff and more
The Situation and the Story, Vivian Gornick
FICTION CRAFT
Letters to a Young Writer, Colum McCann
*The Art of Time in Fiction, Joan Silber
The Half-Known World, Robert Boswell
Burning Down the House, Charles Baxter
*The Art of Subtext, Charles Baxter
Wired for Story, Lisa Cron
Hidden Machinery, Margot Livesey
A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, George Saunders {writing craft paired with iconic short stories from Chekov, Turgenev, Gogol and Tolstoy}
The Eleventh Draft: Craft and the Writing Life from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, edited by Frank Conroy
NARRATIVE STRUCTURE CRAFT
Meander, Spiral, Explode, Jane Alison
ESSAY CRAFT
To Show and To Tell, Phillip Lopate
The Art of the Essay, Phillip Lopate
The Situation and the Story, Vivian Gornick
A Harp in the Stars, Randon Billings Noble (lyric essays)
SHORT STORY CRAFT
Ron Carlson Writes a Story, Ron Carlson
The Story and Its Writer, Ann Charters
THE WRITER’S LIFE/PROCESS
The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
The Creative Habit, Twila Tharp
Still Writing, Dani Shapiro
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose
GETTING PUBLISHED
The Business of Being a Writer, Jane Friedman
The Shortest Distance Between You and a Published Book, Susan Page
The Book You Were Born to Write: Everything You Need to (Finally) Get Your Wisdom Onto the Page and Into the World, Kelly Notaras
The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers, Betsy Lerner (she is a literary agent, and a good one!)
RECOMMENDED BOOKS FOR LITERARY MAGNIFICENCE
RING OF STORIES {CONNECTED SHORT STORIES}
Ideas of Heaven, Joan Silber
Last Call, K.L. Cook
A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
Outline, a novel in 10 conversations, Rachel Cusk
MEMOIR
You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Maggie Smith
Educated, Tara Westover
The Liar’s Club, Mary Karr
The Yellow House, Sarah M. Broom
Devotion, Dani Shapiro (or Inheritance)
Still Point of the Turning World, Emily Rapp Black
Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir, Natasha Trethewey
The Last Supper, Rachel Cusk
Getting Lost, Annie Ernaux
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
ESSAYS
The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison, or anything she writes in NYTimes Magazine
The Anthropology of Turquoise, Ellen Meloy
Between the World and Me or We Were Eight Years in Power, Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, Margaret Renkl
The White Album, Joan Didion
FICTION
Transatlantic, Colum McCann
Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Circe, Madeline Miller
Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
The Overstory, Richard Powers
Horse, Geraldine Brooks
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
James, Percival Everett, as well as Erasure, the book that became the film, “American Fiction”
Prophet Song, Paul Lynch
OMNISCIENT NARRATOR
Pachinko, Min Jin Lee
MULTIPLE NARRATORS
House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus III
Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
Four Spirits, Sena Jeter Naslund
The Sport of Kings, C.E. Morgan
The Overstory, Richard Powers
SHORT STORIES
For a Little While, Rick Bass, or Oil Notes
Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri
Silent Retreats, Philip F. Deaver
NARRATIVE NONFICTION {LITERARY JOURNALISM}
Rising, Elizabeth Rush {This is a blend of narrative nonfiction and oral history}
Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe
NATURE WRITING
{Even if you’re not doing nature writing, these are great for mastering the art of description}
Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez
Is a River Alive? or Underland, Robert MacFarlane
The Anthropology of Turquoise, Ellen Meloy (excellent for mastering the art of writing about color)
Woman in a Polar Night, Christine Ritter
Red, Refuge, The Hour of the Land or Finding Beauty in a Broken World, Terry Tempest Williams
* Starred books are part of an excellent craft series published by Graywolf Press
And by all means…
Read the work of your mentors. A few of of mine are listed here: Sena Jeter Naslund, K.L. Cook, Percival Everett, Ron Carlson and Philip F. Deaver.