Writers Read: Writing Book Recommendations from the MVWG Board
Looking to spend those holiday gift cards on some new writing books? Well you are in luck! The members of the Mississippi Valley Writers Guild board are here to share some of their favorites! Grab a pencil to jot down the titles that sound appealing to you (spoiler alert, that was alllllll of them in my case!) and then bust out those gift cards and get shopping… so you can read… and then write.
Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses
Recommended by Guild President: Jess Witkins
This newer craft book has been getting tons of well deserved attention for its modern approach to writing and the critique process. Sharing examples from his own MFA experience, Salesses addresses how Western critique processes are no different in their implicit biases from any other system setup by the gatekeepers of early colonialism. To counter, Salesses gives background information on how Eastern writing styles have differed and how writing by BIPOC individuals has often suffered under old forms of western critique. It's an invitation to explore different kinds of narrative and writing styles beyond traditional forms. In addition to theory, the author provides questions, numerous craft activities, and generative prompt examples. It's been named at every virtual writers conference I've attended this year, and I loved it!
Descriptionary by Marc McCutcheon
Recommended by Board Member: Heidi Blanke
Descriptionary, by Marc McCutcheon, is subtitled "a thematic dictionary" and offers the writer words related to a specific subject. Chapters are grouped by category like Language or Furniture and then broken down further. Under Language, for example, you'll find Grammatical Terms and Word Games and then lists of words associated with that category; the book is a combination of dictionary and thesaurus. It's a great one to use to be more specific about a character or a scene.
Thesaurus Collection by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi
Recommended by Board Member: Amanda Zieba
My favorite craft book is actually a series of Thesaurus' written by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. Each book in the series is a targeted collection revolving around a specific story element. There are books full of character traits, settings, occupations, conflicts and more. Within the books' pages you will find lists of curated ideas, sensations, dialogue tips and more. To really understand the value of these books you need to get them in your hands. But, for a quick peek inside, you can check out this post that details the updated version of the Emotion Thesaurus.
I Could Tell you Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory by Patricia Hampl
Recommended by Board Member Mary Alexander
Hampl is a memoirist and poet. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota. This particular book is as much a sort of collection of short stories as a book on craft. Much of the craft of writing, when reading Hampl's book, is experiential in that the reader has only to experience her writing to garner a wealth of knowledge about writing. Her words read like honey melting into hot buttered toast. Her use of metaphor is exquisite. But Hampl also doles out more specific information, too. She writes about truth and the need to speak it. She writes about the memoirist's inevitable 'betrayal' of family members and friends. She writes about memory, and the exploration of it; the relationship between the image in our stored memory, and it's value, or the feelings that are attached to that image. For Hampl, "Stalking the relationship, seeking the congruence between stored image and hidden emotion--that's the real job of memoir."