Books on writing

[Nonny]

Does anyone have a favorite book on writing that they'd like to recommend?  My writing workshops have started up again, and a suggested assignment to give ourselves accountability was to get a book on novel writing, our choice, and do one task/item from the book per week, for the next six weeks.

One of the books brought up in class was Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass, which I'm not opposed to getting, but it seems like from some of the reviews that some of the advice is getting a little bit stale just because it was written 15+ years ago and hasn't been updated.  (It sounds like the meat of the writing advice is good, but it doesn't take into account the changes to the publishing world.)

The only other writing book I've read is Stephen King's On Writing, which was good and enjoyable, but doesn't really have exercises to follow.

Also, since we're only about 6 weeks off from NaNoWriMo 2017, this might be a good kick off for people (even if I'm not a person who has ever managed to finish NaNoWriMo).

[Deleted]

I can't remember, but about a year ago I found a few gems at the library on creative writing, et al. I wish I could remember them now. But I'd go to your local library and see. They must have some.

[anastasia517]

"On Writing" is my favourite, but I see you've already read that. I've read a few others that were more specific, like "Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction", which I found helpful. There weren't many exercises in the sort of books I tend to go for though, so I'm not sure how useful they'd be for you.

Specifically for NaNo, there's "No Plot, No Problem" which I have a tradition of re-reading every year. There is some prep stuff, encouragement, and week-by-week stuff to read during the month.

[Nonny]

I ended up ordering The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface, which is also by Donald Maass, but newer, since the top review mentioned 34 exercises, but it won't be here until next week so I can't say yet how useful it will be.

I've also decided to setup a pseudo bullet journal to help track my writing tasks and various writing bits and bobs. I have no desire for a traditional bullet journal (I really don't need that level of fine grain daily tracking in my life, and my phone calendar is a much better option for reminders for meetings for me), but I do much better with writing long hand, so I'm hoping this will help get my ass in gear.