Quite a list here. Here’s my notes as I read through.
On Writing – I did skip ahead to the writing part, but the rest was good, too. The best thing about it isn’t the technical tips but the way he has of swiping aside all the academic jargon we’ve picked up and telling us, very simply, to focus on the story.
Glad to see someone else has read Maugham’s Summing Up. I found it in an old bookcase and loved it – very dense and not for everyone, but so honest and thorough.
Lawrence Block’s Telling Lies is awesome. A great intro by Sue Grafton, and then there's Block himself, asking, "Why aren’t you writing instead of reading this book?"
And yes, many of the best writers didn’t learn with how-to books. I mean, look at the Bible. They didn't even have correspondence courses back then. Jack London did read Spencer’s Philosophy of Style, which has many good tips, but mostly he learned from copying out stories by Kipling.
The Paris Review collections, including Women Writers, are very good – many writers I don’t enjoy reading I really enjoyed reading interviews of.
Steinbeck’s journals are great, as well – there he is warming up after another night of drinking and telling his friend that he’s going to struggle through this chapter, and he does it.
I found Vogler’s Writer’s Journey a little thin – I feel one would be better off reading the material from the source – Joseph Campbell.
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers is very good – a way of clearing out a lot of the dead wood and blundering.
I did order and read about half of Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing, simply because Woody Allen said it was the best book on writing drama. But for me it was too academic/psychological. Dwight Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer presents much of the same material the way a trainer for a boxer might – straight and simple and to the point.
Two great books on the lifestyle and emotional road of writers are Keyes’s The Courage to Write, as BuffStuff mentioned, and Bruce Holland Rogers’s Word Work. Bird by Bird is excellent as well.
And finally, David Morrell has one called Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing. Very good stuff on point of view, dramatic structure, and very funny and insightful bits on publishing and the movie business.
