Books on How to Write Well.

Related pages:
Best Books on how to Write Poetry.
How to Write Poetry: A Recipe. Index. How to Read Poetry. How to Listen Poetry.
Essays on how to write specific forms:
Ghazal. Haiku. Pantoum. Sestina. Sonnet. Villanelle.

Books on how to write well Books on how to write Poetry Forms
Check out the Best Books on Writing Poetry: books you can use without paying the big bucks for an MFA program.

Woe is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O'Conner.
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott. A delightful book to help you stop procrastinating and prove you are a writer, one word at a time.
Lapsing into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print -- and How to Avoid Them, Bill Walsh. An opinionated, humorous commentary and style guide.
Sin and Syntax: How to Create Wickedly Effective Prose by Constance Hale (1999). Vibrant. Lots of brilliant and practical examples.

#1 Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O'Conner (1998 reprint of 1996).

Patricia T. O'Conner was an editor at the New York Times Book Review. Her cheerful and clear instruction on grammar is concise and funny. Chapters include the grammar books you may remember. Chapter titles include "Your Truly: The Possessive and the Possessed" and "Comma Sutra; The Joy of Punctuation."

My favorite is the concise description of when to use the subjunctive, which previously was merely miasma on the far horizon of my lingual skills.

#2 Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott.
(1995, 0-385-48001-6)

This is the famous book wherein Anne Lamott shows you how to find your passion, your voice, your first draft (no matter how feeble), and your publication-ready manuscript.

For example, she notes that, no matter how small your audience, "to have written your version is an honorable thing."

Writers of poetry and of prose can learn much from this delightful, practical, enthralling, and wise book.

#3 Lapsing into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print -- and How to Avoid Them by Bill Walsh.

An opinionated, humorous commentary and style guide, which begins with:

"Be skeptical of stylebooks. . . .
understand the reasons behind the rules --
and therefore know when they should be ignored."

The second half of his book is his "Curmudgeon's Stylebook", which begins with teaching the reader how to determine which indefinite article to use: the A or the AN. [His guideline means trouble for non-native speaker: use the pronunciation rule not the spelling rule.]

It ends with teaching the reader how to decide whether to use YES, I DO or YES, I HAVE. [His guideline has you use the auxiliary verb - unless (this clause must be the joy of grammarians, allowing them to nest deeper and deeper into arcana) - in reply to certain questions that were asked with particular stresses.]

#4 Sin and Syntax: How to Create Wickedly Effective Prose by Constance Hale (1999).

A lively and informative compact book, by an author that loves language like a chocoholic loves a truffle. Constance Hale gives you the basic rules grammar rules, salted with her own viewpoint, such as calling verbs "moody little suckers" and adverbs "promiscuous." But the biggest blessing of this book is the richness of its samples of great, often spectacularly fascinating, writing.

Hale relishes words and their organization like other people relish food, wine, and a close personal relationship. She welcomes you to break the rules of grammar, as long as you know the rules, and know why you're breaking them.

The book has 3 main sections:
Words.
Sentences.
Music.

Subtopics within those give chapters that range from Interjection (in Words), through Phrases and Clauses (in Sentences), to Rhythm (in Music). For 16 such section, she gives you:

"bones" (grammar lessons),
"flesh (writing lessons),
"true transgressions" (the real errors), and
"carnal pleasures" (the joy and beauty that result from your selective application of the rules).

Lots of brilliant examples. And remember Hale on euphemisms, which she says, "are for wimps."

[Thanks for visiting.]

Books on how to write well	Books on how to write Poetry Forms
Check out the Best Books on Writing Poetry: books you can use without paying the big bucks for an MFA program.