It’s all too easy to buy craft books. You get a recommendation from an author, you head to the used bin of the local secondhand bookstore. Or you order up at the online outlet of your choice. Here come the paperbacks, or even hardbacks. I have a triple bookcase of craft. There’s nothing like owning reference and instruction.
Using it is harder. Do you have writing craft books that have unbroken spines? I do. A rough count of 219 books, not counting the 18 dictionaries and style books. I now make it a mission to crack every spine. I used to think this would mar a perfectly good book. Now I not only crack the spines to get the pages to lay flat, I whip out my highlighter. The top favorites get the colored tabs along their edges.
Eric Maisel is a staple on my shelves. He’s got The Van Gogh Blues and How to Stay Sane in the Arts, because he’s a psychologist, but he’s also got The Art of the Book Proposal and Fearless Creativity. He’s an essayist whose works include A Writer’s Paris and A Writer’s San Francisco. His book proposal book is full of meaty, practical processes to sum up a book — so the nonfiction publishers will award you a contract.
Get them open, laying flat
Owning these books is a mark of experience. The mark that is indelible requires cracking spines. Twelve Techniques for Summarizing is open on my desk now, because a new client has a proposal she’s like a fresh set of eyes on. You’re the client for your own talents, so you craft books ought to be cracked for your own sake.
A podcast from a couple of West Coast writers is all about the un-cracked craft book spine. Their Words to Write By podcasts discuss craft books, sometimes a chapter at a time. Three seasons, 59 episodes, from John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction to the latest, The Heroine’s Journey. The podcasters talk about how they use books from authors like Ray Bradbury, Anne Lamott, and Christopher Vogler.
The risk in listening to the show is you’ll want to add one of these to your craft shelves. I’d love to hear about your favorite craft book, or the one that’s still taunting you with its uncracked spine. My latest two are The Secrets of Story and The Secrets of Character, both by cancer survivor and screenwriter Matt Bird. They’re both cracked by now. I gotta get a new set of color tabs to keep up with the pages in these paperbacks.
