In fact, I haven’t enjoyed a book on writing this much since encountering Stephen King’s On Writing some years ago. When I got to the end of A Writer’s San Francisco, I actually felt compelled to go back to the beginning and reread it immediately, such is its charm and inspirational qualities.
Category: Books for writers
A review of The Freelance Writer’s Bible by David Trottier
Trottier helps his readers get over the initial hurdle of writing—into that place of feeling safe as a writer. If you have already written your first article or short story and have a few clips, this book may be more basic than you need, but if you are still trying to find your way into your own voice or the way to approach writing from the more creative side, this is a strong book.
A review of Write, Publish and Sell Your Book by Patricia Fry
Throughout the book are anecdotes from Fry’s own experiences, sidebars, bits of humour, and re-useable templates for everything from queries to press releases. In some instances examples are taken straight from The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book so…
A review of The Well-Fed Self-Publisher by Peter Bowerman
Bowerman has a particular strength in persuasion, and if you haven’t bought this book because you’ve already decided to self-publish, the first chapter will convince you why you need to. There are a number of other books on self-publishing, some…
A review of The Frugal Editor: Put your best book forward to avoid humiliation and ensure success by Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Contrary to popular misconception, publishers will rarely take on a work that is in obvious need of editing (and to a publisher, every typo is obvious), so authors really need to be capable editors of their own work. Writing guru…
A review of The Secrets of Writing Successful Short Stories by Drew McAdam
If you follow McAdam’s didactic advice to the letter, you will not only end up with a file of suitable markets with a calculated fog index, word count, and samples, but you’ll end up with a ready to submit piece,…
A review of 10 Minutes to the Pitch by Chris Abbott
Abbott is exactly the person you want to take this kind of advice from. She’s one of the most well known writer-producers in the business, with a welter of successful television and film credits to her name (including Magnum PI…
A review of Write It Right by Dawn Josephson and Lauren Hidden
Despite the didacticism inherent in the subject matter, this book doesn’t prescribe how you should edit your work. Instead, it leads you down the path of self-discovery, so you can uncover your own weaknesses, and work, as an increasingly experienced…
A review of The Publishing Game series by Fern Reiss
Each chapter comprises a week, within which every day is set out. In other words, like any good time management consultant, Reiss has “chunked” the process into a set of fairly simple and straightforward steps to follow, some taking only…
A review of The Writing Experiment by Hazel Smith
This book is highly recommended for writers of all levels of ability – those interested in producing avant-garde works and those who only want to delve deeper into the art of communication using traditional models. It is, and perhaps unintentionally so, one of the clearest, easy to follow books on postmodernism in literature on the market. This is a unique and very valuable offering to the literary world, full of unusual experiments with words that writers will make use of repeatedly.