5 Books That Have Impacted My Writing Life
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Disclaimer: These links are my affiliate links from Bookshop, which means I earn a small portion of sales if you buy through this post.
I read a lot, but I always get the feeling that there’s yet another book out there that will inspire me, encourage me or at least make me feel less alone as a writer and creative person.
As someone who writes for passion and also for $$, here are some of the books that have influenced my work, expanded my knowledge and just generally impacted my writing life.
In no particular order:
This book is so incredible transparent about the complicated world of publishing. Courtney writes in a straightforward, casual way that makes you feel like maybe your questions aren’t so silly after all. I learned a lot from this book while writing my manuscript and querying agents. And I still reference it today. Highly recommend if you feel like publishing is an opaque industry (spoiler alert: it often is, at least in my experience?). At the end of the book, Courtney includes a ton of quotes from successful writers and I also like flipping through these end pages on those days that writing gets hard.
2. Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays by Durga Chew-Bose
This was the first book I read where almost the entire first half was one single essay. I love experimental writing and playing with prose, so I was really shocked, and heartened, to see how Durga was able to take the risk of having a really long essay lead into the rest of the book. This book is basically an oversized, fuzzy sweater for my writer brain. It’s a balm. It’s an inspiration. It’s a book I pick up often, re-reading it out of order.
3. Writers & Lovers by Lily King
Somehow, quite a few of us in my friend group found out about this book through different channels (social media, etc) and we all loved it. It’s an underrated novel, in my opinion. It ticks off many boxes when it comes to my own writing life: confronting grief, figuring out how to write while paying the bills, chipping away at a big project as all the usual challenges and joys of life unfurl around us. Also, the food descriptions are great. The narrator feels like a friend — a complicated, flawed one, which I really appreciate in fictional characters. I was sad to have finished this!
4. The Best American Food Writing series
Yes, I love food. This series first grabbed my attention because I’d never seen an anthology specifically about food writing. From high school to present, I fed myself a steady diet of Food Network shows and YouTube cooking videos (now TikTok content), so this seemed right up my alley. The writing is always sharp, smart, witty, expressive. It’s nice to get lost in these essays since food isn’t something I cover super often–but a lot of the craft techniques these writers use have helped me with my own writing.
5. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Are you sensing a theme? This stunning memoir also covers: grief, food, being a creative person. I’m so amazed with Michelle’s ability to write such a heart-wrenching story (while also being a freaking rock star!). I really identified with her dedication to capturing the complexity of her home town, and the ways in which grief changes us. Through it all, she held her love for music close, and now we’re all lucky that we get to listen to her brilliant songs.
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