Write That Book Already!: The Tough Love You Need To Get Published Now

by Barry, Sam

  Ridley Pearson

  Author of Killer View, says A Writer’s Journey by Chris Vogler should be on every writer’s desk.

  Kim Addonizio

  Author of Little Beauties, loves The Joy of Writing Sex by Elizabeth Benedict. “This book offers some great ways to get around erotic clichés, like ‘a good sex scene doesn’t have to be about good sex,’” she says. “There are examples from contemporary writers, useful advice, and, of course, it’s an interesting read.”

  Robert Olen Butler

  Author of Intercourse, recommends Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster.

  Roy Blount Jr.

  Author of Alphabet Juice, says, “I know no one wants me to recommend the Uncle Remus books, although looking at those pages while my mother read to me from them, when I was little, was formative. Ethno-stereotypical issues aside, Joel Chandler Harris’s efforts to spell African-American vernacular (whence springs an enormous amount of American oral and musical culture) was fascinating to me. You could spell things that were real but weren’t in the dictionary. There was something almost illicit about it, which was extraordinary coming from my mother, yet also something stone homey. But the main book that has made me a better writer, and now is keeping me from deteriorating too rapidly as a writer, I hope, is the dictionary. The American Heritage one is my favorite.”

  Anne Lamott

  Author of Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith: “I love Lynn Freed’s book on writing, Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home: Life on the Page. It is brilliant, tough, funny, and incredibly honest, just like Lynn. She’s got such a marvelous and dry and sort of nasty sense of humor, and can really make me laugh; but the book is full of wisdom, too.”

  April Sinclair

  Author of Coffee Will Make You Black, says that “Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott, is an amazing guide; warm, soulful, funny, smart, honest and instructive . . . How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James Frey is the writer’s bible when it comes to developing craft . . . Peaks and Valleys by Spencer Johnson, MD, both timely and empowering, teaches how to make good times and bad times work for you . . . and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love is a superbly written, intensely personal, spiritually insightful journey set against the backdrop of three different cultures.”

  Leslie Levine

  Author of Wish It, Dream It, Do It, recommends If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda Ueland.

  Norman Mailer (1923–2007)

  Whose last book was The Castle in the Forest: “I confess to being high on The Spooky Art.”

  Norris Church Mailer

  Author of Cheap Diamonds, in a random incidence of great minds thinking alike: “My favorite book on writing is The Spooky Art by Norman Mailer.”

  Donna Wares

  Editor, My California: Journeys by Great Writers and the brains behind www.californiaauthors.com: “Carolyn See’s Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers is inspirational and quirky and a fun read. Carolyn’s mantra: ‘A thousand words a day, five days a week, for the rest of your life.’ I also like How to Write a Book Proposal by Michael Larsen. His slim volume is a terrific roadmap for crafting a smart proposal.”

  Harriet Chessman

  Author of Someone Not Really Her Mother: “I’d recommend David Huddle’s beautifully written book, The Writing Habit. I love Huddle’s way of couching advice to writers within honest, quiet, cunningly humorous, and always engaging personal essays.”

  THE JAMES JOYCE FAN CLUB

  Scott Turow

  Author of Limitations, writes: “I’d probably pick James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, not because I learned anything from it I could ever hope to repeat, but because it so perfectly described the passion to write and made me surer of my own desires.”

  Jane Ganahl

  Editor, Single Woman of a Certain Age, describes the short story that set her on the writing path: “Araby by James Joyce, specifically, this passage about a young boy in love with an older girl—I read it as a junior in college and switched from Political Science to English as a major right then. I still get the chills, reading it again! Haven’t we all been there?!”

  THE ANNIE DILLARD FAN CLUB

  Christine Wicker

  Author of Lily Dale, suggests “The Writing Life by Annie Dillard— beautifully written and minutely observed essays about keeping faith and hope during the torturous process of writing. Two bits of wisdom I think of almost every writing day came from this book. One comes from Dillard’s observation of chopping wood. She says that to chop a piece of wood you have to aim through the wood to the chopping block. It’s the same with writing. If you aim at the words themselves, they’ll have little resonance. You have to strike more forcefully, full heartedly and courageously at the meaning underneath so that the words come tumbling after, flying away in all directions like wood struck with a well aimed ax. The other piece of advice I rejected as absurd and then couldn’t stop pondering—like a lot of the best wisdom. She says that you shouldn’t write about what interests you most but about what interests only you. That one is difficult, but following it yields all sorts of riches.”

  Elizabeth Benedict

  Author of The Practice of Deceit: “The Writing Life is a somber, eloquent meditation on writing that speaks to the difficulties, obsessiveness, and deep pleasures of the process. It also has the most useful epigraph, from Goethe, for anyone who does serious work of any kind: ‘Do not hurry; do not rest.’”

  THE TOM SWIFT FAN CLUB

  Dave Barry

  Author of Peter and the Sword of Mercy, tells us: “A book that helped me write better was Tom Swift and His Flying Machine. I read it when I was ten, and I thought: ‘This is terrible! I can write better than this!’”

  READING FOR INSPIRATION

  Stephen King

  Author of Just After Sunset, checks in with “The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain. He tells a story in 128 pages that many of today’s bestselling authors would shoot 500 on. Little tiny sentences, each one a straight punch to the heart. Great book.” We’d like to add that we often find ourselves recommending Steve’s On Writing.

  Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

  Author of The Last Song of Dusk: “Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient shimmers with novelistic brilliance: every page is a lesson in the craft of writing and enchantment. It offers innumerable lessons on plotting, the construction of sentences, the blending of poetry and prose, and it sings with a deep and glistening sorrow.”

  Jonathan Kirsch

  Author of The Grand Inquisitor’s Manual, is inspired by “The Slave by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Any book by IBS will teach important lessons to a writer about both the craft of writing and the way a writer needs to use his or her head, heart and eye. Singer’s collected stories (newly reissued by the Library of America) offer a wealth of inspiration and instruction. But The Slave remains my favorite.”

  Lynn Freed

  Author of Reading, Writing & Leaving Home: Life on the Page, finds that “reading the letters and diaries of great writers can be, if not always inspiring, of some comfort. For instance, Franz Kafka diaries contain the following entry: ‘January 19, 1914: Great antipathy to Metamorphosis. Unreadable ending. Imperfect almost to the foundation. It would have turned out much better if I had not been interrupted at the time by the business trip.’” (The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1914–1923, translated by Martin Greenberg with the cooperation of Hannah Arendt, New York: Schocken Books, 1949, p. 12)

  Jacqueline Mitchard

  Author of All We Know of Heaven, tells us: “I found The Birth House by Ami McKay on a bench in an airport. What a lucky day for me. I nearly missed my plane as I fell head first into this unsparing, emotionally rich but not a bit sentimental story of a young girl who befriends an elderly midwife who claims to have chosen Dora at birth to be the next practitioner of her obsolete art. It was enthralling, transcending any genre, and a darned good story, too.”

  Lalita
Tademy

  Author of Cane River and Red River: “If you’ve ever wondered how dramatically altered a life could be by making a single momentary choice, read The Post Birthday World by Lionel Shriver. With fierce insight and complex, nuanced characters, Shriver tells Irina’s story (hinging on whether or not she kisses a man to whom she is attracted) in alternating chapters of reality unfolding in different directions.”

  Diana Abu-Jaber

  Author of Origin: “Writing a thriller gave me a new appreciation for the form. Among the many wonderful models I turned to, Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories was a real standout—a fine confabulation of intrigue and character—one of the most ‘literary’ mysteries I’ve had the pleasure of reading.”

  David Leavitt

  Author of The Indian Clerk, adores Jane Gardam’s Old Filth. “She tells the story of a ‘Raj Orphan’—born in Malaysia to a British Colonial bureaucrat at the turn of the twentieth century and then shipped back to England to be educated—and his uneasy adjustment to a world radically different from any he has known. The hero becomes a famous barrister in Hong Kong known affectionately as ‘Filth’ (Failed in London, Try Hong Kong). An engaging, funny, and moving novel.”

  Catherine Brady

  Author of The Mechanics of Falling and Other Stories, loves:

  “Marilynne Robinson, Gilead. The novel is told in the form of a letter from an aging preacher to his young son; the preacher anticipates he’ll die before his son comes of age and wants to leave this letter for him. Well written and deeply spiritual, the novel achieves a rare thing in creating a convincingly good man in its narrator and making you share his faith in life. The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov. There was once a cartoon in the New Yorker with one mechanic, working under a car, peering up at his fellow mechanic to say, ‘And, of course, Chekhov.’ He’s such a perfect short story writer, and his letters are embedded with gems of wisdom, not just about craft but about the honesty a writer must cultivate.”

  Harriet Chessman

  Author of Someone Not Really Her Mother: “One inspiring book is simply a book of poetry by Mark Doty, Atlantis . . . I have found great inspiration in the honesty and heft, sharpness, and beauty of his poetic voice. Even though I write fiction, his poetry (which has a beautiful narrative angle, often) inspires me to listen to my best and most fertile writing self. Virginia Woolf ’s essays in The Common Reader and other books are also wonderfully inspiring to me.”

  Andrew Sean Greer

  Author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli and The Story of a Marriage: “Honestly, I never know what will inspire other writers except work that seems aesthetically related to what they’re working on. I love War and Peace, so I’ll give them that, and figure at some point in their lives they will open it and read it and find something that works for them. But I would never expect a writer to read anything except what works for them at the moment. The best we can do is to introduce them to surprises that may inspire: for instance, Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica."

  SOME AUTHORS’ FAVORITE BOOKS TO GIVE AS GIFTS

  Ben Fong-Torres

  Author of Becoming Almost Famous, likes to give Elvis at 21: New York to Memphis by Alfred Wertheimer. “Elvis fans, get ready to get all shook up. Wertheimer got a job shooting publicity photos for various, mostly boring recording artists in the Fifties. Then along came Elvis, and along with him went Alfred—on the road, into dressing rooms, shooting TV rehearsals, in the recording studio, on stage, and, most deliciously, off stage, canoodling with female fans at coffee shops or in a corridor, sneaking a kiss. A stunning volume.”

  John Lescroart

  Author of Betrayal, loves Turpentine by Spring Warren: “Spring is tremendously talented and this book has utterly captivated everyone who’s read it. A great present—enjoy!”

  Leonard Maltin

  Author of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guides: “Memories of a Munchkin by and about Meinhard Raabe, the Coroner of Munchkinland in The Wizard of Oz. Daniel Kinske has surrounded Raabe’s amazing personal memorabilia with a wealth of other Oz-related material, and commissioned a number of great artists (including the late Al Hirschfeld) to provide interpretations of Raabe’s famous scene in the classic film.”

  Sara Davidson, author of Leap!: “For spiritual inspiration, I’d give Your Soul’s Compass by Joan Borysenko and Gordon Dveirin.”

  Luis Urrea

  Author of The Hummingbird’s Daughter, loves “Jack Kerouac’s original scroll version of On the Road, amazing for fans and road maniacs, with all the bad language, real names, and naughty bits restored—and the new Library of America’s edition of Jack’s road books.”

  Crystal Zevon

  Author of I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon: “My all-time favorite is Stories of God by Rainer Maria Rilke; but this year I’m recommending the beautifully written and thought-provoking novel Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.”

  Rabih Alameddine

  Author of The Hakawati, says “I don’t particularly care for inspirational books or how-to books, especially when it comes to writing. What inspired me to write were novels. I could name quite a few, but the top of the list, the one that I would give to anyone who wishes to write is Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. It’s about reading, writing, and enjoying the entire lunatic world of fiction.”

  Daniel Handler, AKA Lemony Snickett

  Author of The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story, illustrated by Lisa Brown: “Lately I’ve been giving people I love a book I love by Joshua Beckman entitled Your Time Has Come. It’s a striking, tiny book full of striking, tiny poems, perfect for all the striking people in your life, whether or not they are tiny and whether or not they like poetry.”

  Janis Cooke Newman

  Author of Mary Todd Lincoln: “Everybody with a kitchen should own a copy of Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker. The 1975 edition is the best, acknowledging the invention of the microwave and including advice on how to prepare opossum.”

  THE ROCK BOTTOM REMAINDERS’ FAVORITE BOOKS TO GIVE TO CHILDREN

  Dave Barry, lead guitar

  Coauthor of Science Fair: “For girls, I highly recommend the ‘Doll People’ series by Ann Martin, Laura Godwin, and Brian Selznick. These three books—The Doll People, The Meanest Doll in the World, and The Runaway Dolls—are wonderfully imaginative and have great page-turner plots. I read the first two to my daughter, Sophie, who would not let me stop reading; she devoured the third on her own. For younger readers, you can’t beat the ‘Pigeon’ books by Mo Willems, which are hilarious and a little weird, not unlike Mo Willems himself.”

  Roy Blount Jr., background vocals

  Author of Alphabet Juice: “Mrs. Discombobulous by Margaret Mahy, illustrated by Jan Brychta. The eponymous Mrs. D. is always all up in her husband’s face—she calls him, among other things, ‘Mr. Tom Fool Noodle’—but then she falls into the washing machine, and after due consideration—‘Swish swash do the wash, swish swash do the wash’—he saves her. She is moved to think about the way she has been talking to him and she promises to be nicer. That’s the bare bones, which are fleshed out by lots of colorful vituperation from the Mrs., which my kids loved to hear and to repeat, and which I loved to read aloud. As I recall, the washing machine also goes ‘Frooom.’”

  James McBride, saxophone

  Author of Song Yet Sung: “I liked Beverly Cleary’s books on Homer Price when I was a kid because I always wanted my own bicycle. That took years to happen, and by the time I got a bicycle I was so old I didn’t like her books any more.”

  Amy Tan, rhythm dominatrix

  Author of Saving Fish from Drowning: “The Little Prince. It’s a book for all ages, and at all ages we experience moments of loss and also become lost. The Little Prince is able to find what matters by looking beyond assumptions. He reminds us to not limit our hope to what we assume is ‘realistic.’ He thinks you can still find what most think is
forever gone. It’s a good book to read when you are becoming cynical about the world—in other words, a book for many to read now.”

  APPENDIX II

  THE LIFE

  CYCLE OF A

  BOOK

  What happens to your great idea between the moment of conception and the remainder bin? Oh! Uh, actually we meant the New York Times bestseller list. Here’s an overview of the many mysterious stages of publication.

  WRITING

  We said it at the begining of this book and we’ll say it again—the writing comes first. There is no one way to complete a manuscript, but the most important thing is to sit down and get started. So if you haven’t written today, stop reading this now and write two pages. Then come back and keep reading.

  It’s a good idea (but perhaps not essential) to have some sense of what you want to accomplish when you begin, but remain open to changing course if the writing leads you that way. Maybe your family saga about eighteenth-century Czech cheesemakers just doesn’t work in the first person (from the point of view of the soup ladle) and wants to be in the third person. Maybe your characters will let you know what they want to do; maybe you’ll get to boss them around. Perhaps your sweeping history of civilization viewed through the lens of nap taking has morphed into a more focused look at bed making—be open to the possibility that the new direction may be the one you should follow and that you may have more than one book idea going simultaneously. Some authors like to write detailed outlines and character studies, while others like to be surprised as the manuscript unfolds. Perhaps your historical treatise requires years of research. By all means max out that library card. But while you’re at it, don’t forget to write, and don’t be afraid of where the writing takes you.