A Few Great Books on Writing

Reading books makes you a great writer, that's a given but did you ever think about reading a book about writing?  On Writing by Stephen King is a great book.  He talks about his beginnings as a young writer when he use to write short stories and submit them for publication and get nothing but rejections.  His also gives writers some great advice. In his book you even get a peek of what inspires King's spooky imagination, like when he use to work at a laundry that cleaned table linen from restaurants and use to have maggots climbing up his arms.

Of course I love Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose.  Prose breaks down writing into words, sentences, paragraphs and dialogue among other things and uses examples for the "best" to show you how its done and done well. Walter Mosley's book This Year You Write Your Novel takes you through the revision process in a way that won't make your crazy because as we all know writing is about rewriting.  In his revision process he look at how each character develops throught the book, that's one draft and even focusing on just dialogue throughout your novel is one technique he uses as part of his revision process. 

I think all these books are worth reading but one thing you must always do if you want to finish that book is keep writing.