I think I learned how to write largely by L’Amour’s method—reading good books and absorbing their style. I suppose I must have had some writing textbooks back in the early days of my schooling, before we switched to a more literature-based approach, but considering that I’ve utterly forgotten them, their influence can’t have been great.

In the present day, I’m not a huge fan of how-to books on writing. When I first began writing seriously several years ago, I did read a ton of how-to blogs and articles and gleaned a lot of solid practical advice from them: things like how to handle point of view, avoid too much passivity, et cetera. After a while, though, I found you can reach a saturation point with this—you begin to feel like you’re reading the same advice over and over again, and even that it’s making you second-guess your own work too much. So eventually I moved away from how-to topics as a steady diet, referring back to them only when looking for help with a specific problem or feeling the need to brush up on a certain technique.

The kind of writing nonfiction I find I like most now is memoir-type writing by authors, who share some of their own techniques, opinions, and experiences with the joys and headaches of writing—less of a “how-to” than a “how-I-do.” Sometimes you agree wholeheartedly with their conclusions, sometimes you differ, sometimes you find a thought or a tip which never occurred to you before that ends up being a tremendous help. It’s a less formal and less pressuring way of exploring the subject of writing than strict lists of dos and don’ts.

All that being said, here’s the small collection of nonfiction writing books I’ve accumulated over the years—books that have provided inspiration, or served as a trusty reference. They kind of fall into two categories:

nuts and bolts

The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. Truth: when I was young I thought the title of this book was “Strunk and White”—it was one of those copies where the authors’ names on the cover are bigger than the title, and everyone in the house just casually referred to it as “Strunk and White.” Anyway, this is a primer I don’t think you can go wrong with, no matter how experienced you are. It’s always useful to come back to when you want to clarify certain basic guidelines, or just need a breath of fresh air to clear your head after reading too much bad English. And it takes up next to no space on a bookshelf.

Simple and Direct by Jacques Barzun. The funny thing is, I’m not certain if I ever read this one straight from cover to cover, but I am sure I’ve absorbed all of its contents at some time or another, and benefited from them. Much like “Strunk and White,” it aims at creating a common-sense, understandable style, and goes into a bit further practical detail.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. After reading this blunt, irreverent, no-nonsense guide to punctuation, I don’t think there was ever any danger of my forgetting what the different punctuation marks were invented for or how not to use them. Punctuation somehow receded to the least of my worries, and erudite specks such as the ellipsis and semicolon became warm and fast friends.

Chambers’ Synonyms and Antonyms. The only criticism I have of Chambers is that they should have better bindings, because this is my second copy, and I’m fairly certain I’ll eventually end up splitting this one’s binding too. I pull this one off the shelf in both moments of inarticulate despair and moments of being certain there’s a better word to express the idea knocking at the inside of my head.

those lovely intangibles

Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster. This is a really nice, intelligent and relaxed look at the basic elements that go into making an enjoyable novel, illustrated with examples from classic literature. I did a lot of pencil-underlining once I got my own copy (also wrote a short review which you can find here), and pick it up every once in a while when I feel like I need a big-picture restoration of perspective.

The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers. I’d been curious about this one ever since Abigail Hartman recommended it so enthusiastically, and I wasn’t disappointed. Sayers makes the case that man, being created in the image of God, shares the characteristics of God as Creator, and has a natural instinct to create and craft works of his own. Being a writer herself, Sayers uses examples from the writer’s life and experiences to illustrate her ideas about the creative mind, which is what makes this book particularly interesting for writers. It’s definitely the deepest and most scholarly book on this list, and I’m looking forward to another slow and careful reading to mull over its ideas further.

Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. You’ve probably heard me mention this one before. It’s got such a nice refreshing, emboldening perspective on creativity—not just for writers but definitely applicable to writing—that flipping back through my favorite parts is always somewhat of a pick-me-up when I feel like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew or gotten lost in the minutiae of things going wrong with a project.

Writers: what’s your opinion of how-to nonfiction? Love it or hate it? Favorite nonfiction books on writing?

I am always swamped with ideas.

An overactive imagination is both my greatest blessing, and sometimes a rather pesky curse. I wouldn’t be without it for anything, because it means I always have an idea when I need one; but it’s also an ongoing challenge.

I have ideas filed away by the dozen. I have notebooks full of one-paragraph and two-page sketches for short stories that may or may not end up being written one day. I have bits of random dialogue waiting to find a home in some story or other. I have lists of titles without stories, titles which just sound so nice I didn’t want to forget them. I have a handful of antiquated novel plots from my early teen years, mostly for nostalgia’s sake, but partly because I have a touch of the pack-rat instinct that says not to throw away anything that might conceivably be useful one day. (I did go through my older notes recently and cleared out a lot of stuff I realized wasn’t going to be any use; I’m getting a little more practical in this area.)

I have a few false starts of novel and novella drafts that I haven’t given up hope on. I also have concepts, character lists and a few sketchy notes for novels that I firmly intend to write one day. And then I have a dozen quick outlines or concepts for novels that at this stage are pipe dreams, but which I had to write down just on the magical off-chance that someday I will find myself capable of writing them.

Story ideas, you see, are not bound by time or space or one’s own capabilities. It doesn’t take any effort at all to dream of writing an epic family saga spanning thirty or a hundred years. It’s easy to fudge the technical details in your mind when you’re captivated by a plot that centers around subjects you know practically nothing about—aviation, horse racing, railroads, factories, oil drilling. With the experience I’m gaining from researching Dearest Lieutenant, I know I can master those subjects if I really want to write about them someday—one at a time, please—but the task would be no joke. Ideas are free, but writing a book costs time and effort.

Occasionally I catch myself saying, “Why didn’t somebody just write this or make a movie of it in 1946 so it would exist for me to enjoy and I wouldn’t have to do all the work?”

The practical challenge of the overactive imagination is, of course, that it barges in on you at the most inconvenient times. It tempts you with those glittering new ideas when you’re supposed to be concentrating faithfully on just one or two projects till completion. Learning to manage it is an ongoing thing for me, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. You see, I’ve spent most of my life, from early childhood on up, entertaining myself by making up stories in my head. Some of them dance pleasantly in my mind for a while, then evaporate painlessly when it becomes clear they don’t have enough substance to be worth the time. But when an idea keeps coming back, keeps gaining complexity and keeps hinting at future promise…then I begin to take it seriously.

So I write it down.

Even if it’s just one paragraph, I commit the concept and perhaps a few character names to paper; maybe a few key scenes or lines of dialogue; and that satisfies the anxious little corner of my mind that insists “This is good; you don’t want to lose it!” And then I go back to whatever I’m supposed to be writing. Whether the captured concept is for next month, next year or next decade, I know it’ll be there when I need it and I can rest easier. Even if my imagination never does.

(In this twenty-first century, I sometimes create a private Pinterest board. Somehow that seems like even more of a commitment than pen and paper, so I usually wait till an idea has been upgraded from the pipe-dream stage to the “I’m definitely going to write this someday” stage—but the way some of the pipe dreams have been nagging at me lately, I wonder if Pinterest would help keep them quiet.)

Seriously—I have jotted notes for a couple of series, at least one trilogy, two of those epic family sagas, and at least one sequel to something I’ve written but not published yet. Silly? Perhaps. But it doesn’t cost anything to dream.