The practice of writing

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1. weinzierlJan 2025
   Apart from his fiction, I can recommend his "The Practice of Writing" from 1996. Not so much for practical writing advice, but because it is an entertaining and interesting read. Even decades after reading it I particularly remember the anecdotes about Graham Greene and how he likely was as much a spy as he was a writer.
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2. BylinerAug 2013
   Hi. Some excellent suggestions in this thread already. Here are a few more.

   1. Read great writing. If you want to write better nonfiction, read the masters of nonfiction. Michael Lewis. Tracy Kidder. Atul Gawande. Joseph Mitchell. Jon Krakauer. Christopher Hitchens. Tom Junod. If you want to write great fiction, read Murakami, Marquez, Palahniuk, Eggers, Hosseni, Oates, Atwood. (Shameless plug here, you can find stories by these folk at Byliner: http://www.byliner.com )

   2. Read about writing. Some worthy books on this:

   On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King (really!)

   The Practice of Writing, by David Lodge

   The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard

   Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott

   Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd

   To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction, by Phillip Lopate

   3. As already mentioned upthread, practice. Write something every day.

   4. If you're not confident in your writing, apply your MVP lessons. Write short sentences. Use as few words as possible. Rid your sentences of adjectives and adverbs. Study your verb choices. Ditch the complex punctuation and dependent clauses. Ask yourself, What's the least amount of "writing" necessary to convey this idea or image?

   5. Have fun.

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