Cannonball Read 16

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

> FAQ Home
> Tag: books about writing

“Writing, regardless of the end result—whether good or bad, published or not, well reviewed or slammed—means celebrating beauty in an often ugly world.”

The Art of the Memoir by Mary Karr

by Leave a Comment

CBR 15 Bingo – North America I was gifted this book for my 40th birthday as I had made it known to many of my friends that I started working on my own memoir-ish book. In the time since I started my book, I have stopped and started and stalled many times over so I waited months to crack this open, as it sat taunting me, bursting with the expertise of the lauded memoirist Mary Karr. When I finally got over myself and begrudgingly and […]

The Culprit Behind All the Gastrointestinal Distress

THE EMOTION THESAURUS: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

by Leave a Comment

For several years, editors and agents have recommended “showing” not “telling” and frequently use the Emotion Thesaurus as a means to show how it’s done. It’s simple really. Instead of saying “She felt surprised,” you look up surprise in the EMOTION THESAURUS and insert “Her mouth fell open and her hand flew to her chest after her fingers touched her parted lips and she gasped.” This, along with thirty other physical manifestations for surprise supposedly show the reader what the character is experiencing. Some border […]

“But so many of us can be soothed by writing: think of how many times you have opened a book, reading one line, and said, “Yes!” And I want to give people that feeling too, of connection, communition

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

by Leave a Comment

For a long while, I’ve said that I was going to write a book. It has always been the thing I could do if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to actually try because DUH then I would actually have to prove that I could do the thing I so nonchalantly knew I could do. Makes sense, right? See also “fear of failure” and “you can’t fail if you don’t have a plan” and you’ll be downright cozy with some of my life mantras. […]

“Plant a Bomb on the First Page”

The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells by Ben Bova

by 2 Comments

The late, great science fiction novelist, Ben Bova (1932-2019) began his life in aeronautics and his incredible planetary fiction shows it. He didn’t cotton with malarky like wormholes and faster-than-light drives. His use of hard (and practical) science distinguished him from other SF writers, and he shared that with us through his own writing experiences in this book. I’d not read many of his short stories, but he reprints his shorter ones in this book to give new writers solid examples of developing character, plot, […]

Those Who Can Do, Can’t Teach

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card

by Leave a Comment

I’ll admit to some prejudice to reviewing this. While I think Mr. Card is an exceptional writer, I find his homophobic comments hard to take. But this was on my list of books that beginning writers should consume, so I bought a used copy  to learn something. As with other books written over thirty years ago, the section on the writing business at the end is outdated and totally skippable. But the basics of world and story construction are helpful. I found his section on […]

Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew

Steering the Craft by Ursula K. LeGuin

by Leave a Comment

For the last ten years, I’ve heard  this book on writing by the grand dame of fantasy and science fiction is the book every writer should have in his or her back pocket; however, I found it disappointing. Perhaps if I’d read this book at the start of my writing journey, I’d have found it much more helpful. Plus, it’s largely a workbook with writing exercises on various elements such as punctuation, sentence length, syntax, and other rules of good writing which a beginning creative […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo