10 Essential Essays about Writing

Why I Write by Joan Didion - Exploring the art of writing, and what it means to the author

Autobiographical Notes by James Baldwin - I was born in Harlem thirty-one years ago. I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read…

Write Till You Drop by Annie Dillard - “Do you think I could be a writer?” “I don’t know… . Do you like sentences?”

The Nature of the Fun by David Foster Wallace - “A book-in-progress is a kind of hideously damaged infant that follows the writer around wanting love, wanting the very thing its hideousness guarantees it’ll get: the writer’s complete attention.”

That Crafty Feeling by Zadie Smith - “What I have to say about craft extends no further than my own experience, which is what it is - 12 years and three novels.”

How To Write With Style by Kurt Vonnegut - Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it?

Where Do You Get Your Ideas? by Neil Gaiman - A meditation on inspiration

Why They Aren’t Writing the Great American Novel Anymore by Tom Wolfe - A treatise on the Varieties of Realistic Experience

Everything you Need to Know About Writing Successfully - in Ten Minutes by Stephen King - Short, sharp advice on everything from talent and self-criticism to having fun and entertaining your audience

Write Like a Motherfucker by Cheryl Strayed - Raw, emotional adivce on the role of humility and surrender in the often tortured world of the writer