Sunday, February 4, 2018

A Few Writing Resources for the Restless Writer

Crows on the Mind: A Self Portrait (2017)
I have been cutting my heart out the last year writing a memoir, that I suspect now will become a trilogy.  I have the first book written and have tucked it away as I write the second. The third is nothing more than good hope. 

Each section written, requires rest. My resting moments where I distance myself from the stories I am telling are often ones where I am reading.  In 2013 I wrote a post listing important texts that have aided me as a writer and thinker.  In this post, I update that list, citing works I recently found compelling. Here's a link to the 2013 post.



A Few Books that Help Me to Consider How Place Shapes a Person
Bachelard, Gaston. (2014). The Poetics of Space. New York: Penguin.
Basho. (1996). Back Roads to Far Towns. New York: Ecco.
Biss, Eula. (2009). Notes from No Man’s Land.  St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press.
De Botton, Alain. (2008). The Architecture of Happiness. New York: Vintage.
Ehrlich, Gretel. (1986). The Solace of Open Spaces. New York: Penguin.
Lopez, Barry. (1989). Crossing Open  Ground. New York: Vintage.
Norris, Kathleen. (2001). Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Oliver, Mary. (2016). Upstream: Selected Essays. New York: Penguin.
Stenger, Wallace. (1987). The American West as Living Space.  University of Michigan Press.

A Few Books That Inspire Me to Look Closely (Really this list is arbitrary.  Perhaps substitute with those texts you cannot help but put down/pick up/put down/pick up/Turn towards and away... and so on)
Currey, Mason, (2013). Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. New York: Borzoi Book.
Danticat, Edwidge. (2017). The Art Of Death: Writing the Final Story. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press. 
Didion, Joan. (2006). The Year of Magical Thinking. New York: Vintage.
Doré, Garance. (2015). Love Style Life. New York: Spiegel & Grau.
Li, Yiyun. (2017). Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. New York: Random House.
Solnit, Rebecca. (2014). The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness. San Antonio, TXL: Trinity University Press.

A Few Books To Tune Your Ears and Call You to Play
Rushdie, Salman. (1991). Haroun and the Sea of Stories. New York: Granta Books.

A Few Books To Strengthen Your Own Art as Writer
Casey, Maud. (2018). The Art of Mystery: The Search for Questions. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press. 
Clark, Roy Peter. (2008). Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. New York: Little Brown.
Doty, Mark. (2010). The Art of Description. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press. 
Gardner, John. (1979). On Moral FictionNew York: Basic Books.
Klinkenborg, Verlyn. (2013). Several Short Sentences About Writing. New York: Vintage.
Lopate, Philip. (2013). To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction. New York: Free Press.
Smith, Marion Roach. (2011). The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing& Life. New York: Grand Central Publishing.
Woolf, Virginia. (1985). “A  Sketch of the Past” in Moments of Being. New york: Mariner Books.

A Few Books To Complicate Your Teaching Practices
Latta, Margharet Macintyre. (2013). Curricular Conversations: Play is the (Missing) Thing. New York: Routledge.
Newkirk, Tom. (2017). "Telling a Better Story about Writing." Embarrassment: And the Emotional Underlife of Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.