I’m going through my semi-annual hankering for more writing books, \u00a0hoping one will spur me to solve all my (writing) problems as if by magic. Of course that’s a ridiculous expectation and I wonder if there is a book out there that’s really indispensible.<\/p>\n
My own favorites are Self-editing for Fiction Writers<\/em> and Orson Scott Card’s book about characterization (which I bought used since I won’t put money in the man’s pocket).<\/p>\n Among the ones I’m considering: Showing and Telling<\/em> by Laurie Alberts which sounds pretty good, and possibly Plot vs Character<\/em> by Jeff Gerke (though I will ignore any of his Christian-writing tips). Those cover two areas where I could use improvement. Both have good reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.<\/p>\n I’m going through my semi-annual hankering for more writing books, \u00a0hoping one will spur me to solve all my (writing) problems as if by magic. Of course that’s a ridiculous expectation and I wonder if there is a book out there that’s really indispensible. My own favorites are Self-editing for Fiction Writers and Orson Scott […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pzLgx-mD","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Got any other absolute must-haves to recommend? Any opinion on either of those two?<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"