Motivational Mondays -- Filled Up and Breathing

 

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now #351 -- Writers on the Writing Life (Bio-Journals)

What do you consider the best books about the writing 

life (not those about "how to" or that kind of thing)?

Excellent question. I love reading writers writing about the world as they experience it specifically as writers. (Hmm... I wonder if I can get the word "write" in that sentence one more time...)

For my money, Stephen King's ON WRITING is fantastic. It almost goes without saying to include this one is you are a contemporary writer. But that's only because it's such a great story of his life of crafting stories.



Another I absolutely adore is Eudora Welty's ONE WRITER'S BEGINNINGS. This one is as much a biography as it is a journal on becoming a writer. And trust me, it's prose is pure beauty.



Next would be one from my all-time favorite non-fiction writer, Annie Dillard. Here THE WRITING LIFE captures the beauty of creation through both the natural world and the internal world of imagination.



But perhaps no one understand the writing life better than that beagle of all authors -- Snoopy (with a little help from some of his biggest fans).

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#240) -- Writers Read Writers

Which writers would you most recommend for 

other writers to read to strengthen their own writing?

Every writer I know will have different responses for this, but the writers who most inspire and teach me the craft are:

 
1. Ernest Hemingway

 
2. Ed McBain


3. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

 
4. Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 
5. Annie Dillard


6. Ray Bradbury

7. Christa Faust


8, Langston Hughes


9. Flannery O'Connor


10. Richard Hugo

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#74) -- Coffee and Conversation

If you could have an uninterrupted hour of coffee and 

conversation with any one living writer, whom would you choose?

This response could change on a daily basis sometimes, depending on what I'm reading. And sadly, the authors I'd most love to share a cup of coffee with are now dead.

But for living writers, at the moment, I'd have to go with Annie Dillard. I've loved her way of seeing the world and then transcribing her vision to words ever since I read A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek for a college assignment way back when I was a lot younger.

Ironically, the thing I wouldn't want to talk about with her would be writing stuff. I'd really just prefer to sit back, sip my espresso and let her tell me about moths and broken tree limbs in her own beautifully fascinating way. And with any luck, she wouldn't notice when my hour was up.