Books on writing 101 is a collection of book recommendations to get you started on writing. Inspirational, insightful, and entertaining books I’ve enjoyed that will help you find your own way. Everyone learns differently, but this is how I started:

Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird

“Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.” (p.26) From a chapter called: Broccoli

As you learn more about story structure, and the traps of lazy or bad writing, it becomes increasingly hard to hypnotize yourself into just creating something. Bird by Bird is a book that sets out to emphasize: you will be bad, probably forever. Even if you get good, you will think you're still bad. I find this sentiment comforting because for a long time it feels like a skill you get good at and then... professionalism happens. You get published, you get work, it become effortless and nice and even joyful to write. But Anne goes back to this thought in many chapters to give you a dose of reality (along with, thankfully, a cure).

"Almost all good writing begins with terrible first drafts. You need to start somewhere... A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft - you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft - you fix it up [...] And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy." (p.26) Shitty First Drafts

In a culture that has becoming increasingly open about creative process and the freedom of knowledge, it can be tempting to give away the first draft (or the second or third draft, for that matter) before it's time. I've been thinking a lot about open culture and how much better creating is now than it might have been 30 years ago. YouTube and Blog Culture have opened up the creative process to ensure that people who want to create, can create - they have the resources to at least see how someone else does it. I really like that. But it can definitely be tempting to document all of the gross first-thought kind of work that goes into something like writing, or music, or illustration. I feel like with illustration, or other visual art crafts, it's much easier to explain: "I'm working on faces this year, I feel really bad about these, but look... there's improvement here. Here's what I learned." But with writing I find it much harder to feel open enough to say: "I'm working on dialogue right now. Please watch me skim through a library of books to see how the masters do it. Fail to do it myself. Watch Netflix like a psychopath - stopping, writing down character interactions, backing up again, starting again, writing more things down... and hope I get better.”

Along with this, it is very tempting to show people your early work for the sense of validation it brings. "Look, I know this is an early draft, but I wanted to share something." The real trap here is that *it's too early* to get feedback. You know the story doesn't work yet. You know you're still hypnotized into feeling like you did a fantastic job and that you are a fucking genius. But if you wait a week, and read it again like you're supposed to, (to unhypnotize yourself), you'll see it isn't ready. The kind of feedback you may get at this point could be devastating to the process. It often sends me down a rabbit hole of self-doubt or, worse, egoistic betrayal. "They just don't get it, those fools! What do they know about story!?"

As in Ursula K. Le Guin's *Steering the Craft*, the idea of hypnotizing yourself into creating with confidence is something you don't hear often in writing lessons - or at least, you don't hear it said quite this way. It gives a sense of play and freedom. Just trick yourself for a while into doing this thing, then, when you're ready, put on a different hat.

This is still difficult for me. Putting on the metaphorical Creator Hat, which ignores all spelling errors, and story structure mistakes, and character voice, and how a brother in one scene became a sister later in the piece... It's hard to just plow forward, knowing later that you'll come back with the Editor Hat and fix it.

When we interviewed Cory Doctorow for the Talking to Ghosts podcast, he told us about "TK"-ing a detail and then moving on to whatever you were writing. I think this is pretty common knowledge among folks who write regularly, but I didn't know about it at the time. The idea of "TK"-ing something is this: You are writing, you're speeding through, you're in the moment, but you can't remember the eye color of your main love interest, which was set 20 pages ago... Instead of stopping and going back through all the files to find that note, or that eye color, or whatever, you just put "[tk: eye color]" and keep on writing. When the draft is done, during editing, you can search "tk" and get all of the things you need to add back in. "Tk" stands for To Come, but they use "t" and "k" because "tk" doesn't appear in other words, so it's easier to find. If you were to use "tc" you'd get search results for words like "ouTCome" as well. It saves time.

I don't do this enough. I should, but I don't. Because my writing times are so sporadic, I don't really have the time to go back through all the documents anyway. But if you're a good writing student, who actually sets time aside to write in a nice, quiet environment, I definitely recommend getting in the habit. Do whatever you can to not break focus and flow.

Parting words from Anne:

"Publication is not going to change your life or solve your problems. Publication will not make you more confident or more beautiful, and it will probably not make you any richer... Let's discuss some other reasons to write that may surprise a writer, even a writer who hasn't given up on getting published." (p.185)

What follows is a motivational chapter on why you should write for yourself and, if you write for others, why it should be special. Definitely check out this book. If you are in Multnomah County, check it out from the library!

Keep your eyes out for more Books on Writing 101 next week! The 101 series are books that I think are a great place to start if you know nothing about writing and want to get started. Nothing too wild, but still packed with wonderful tips and insight.

Previous post in this series:

Stephen King’s “On Writing”

Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”

Ursula K. le Guin’s “Steering the Craft”