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A wonderful book that's a little off the beaten path for HN is "Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life," by Anne Lamott.

Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott is an amazing book about writing. It's funny, very helpful, inspiring, etc...

http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Some-Instructions-Writing-Life/dp...

Fantastic article. Love the Ann Lamott reference; read her book "Bird by Bird," from which the quote came; it really is great. Reading more into this article than "start with something and go from there" is reading too much.

As for books on a similar topic I found Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird" both inspiring and enjoyable.
Link: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Bird-by-Bird/Anne-Lamott/e/...

  >> but the troubble with good writting is that there is no good way to get better. 

Try reading

  On Writing (Stephen King)

  Bird by Bird

Although to summarize, the bulk of the advice in both books is encouraging you to write every day.

Colin... ahem Wright has it right: write.

There are several really good books that cover this as well; they're pretty easy to search. I really enjoyed Bird by Bird and several of the Pressfield books.

Note, of course, that reading about writing is not actually writing.

Yup, I pray quietly that I don't get 'reviews' like this when I finally get some writing done. Useful techniques, but widely used already. See Anne Lamott 'Bird by Bird' and the (real) reviews of that book.

My field (programming) has been well covered so I'll share books about my side-field, writing.

- On Writing - Stephen King

- Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott

- Story - Robert McKee (screenwriting)

- Do the work - Stephen Pressfield (he's more famous for The War of Art but I haven't actually read that one yet)

Also there are some great blogs out there

- Terrible Minds by Chuck Wendig

- The Creative Penn - Joanna Penn

- Mary Robinette Kowal's blog

- John August (screenwriting)

I'm in the middle of The Road To Character, and it's a bit too much "people used to be better" for me so far - but still it has some good points here and there.
Wodehouse (also listed in the OP) makes me happy to read, they're hilarious and glowingly warm books.

Here are some recommendations from me in a similar vein, (non-fiction) books that positively influenced my outlook:

- Lamott's Bird by Bird, it's reflections on how to be a writer, but the advice works on "living" and "working" in general

- Werner Herzog - A Guide for the Perplexed: an updated long interview with Herzog on his life and his craft, extremely passionate. There are so many minor stories and bits of wisdom that positively influenced my outlook on humanity and the work I do.

- Bakewell's How To Live: If you don't have time or leisure to read Montaigne's Essais (I'm still not finished with those), Bakewell's book is a bit of a primer/summary of Montaigne's lessons interwoven with Montaigne's life.

- Marsh's Do No Harm: it's the autobiography of a "famous" neuro-surgeon at the end of his career. If I'm 50% as honest and humble about the mistakes I've made at the end of my life (mistakes in his operations turned several patients into people who need constant care for the rest of their lives) then I can die contempt.

I detest this essay. I won't go too far into the reasons why, because David Beaver has already done an excellent job of that: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992

I'd also agree with Geoff Pullum's characterization of it as "a smug, arrogant, dishonest tract full of posturing and pothering, and writing advice that ranges from idiosyncratic to irrational" (http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/04/04/eliminati...)

But apart from it being a very poor source of writing advice, I don't believe it's accurate in its diagnosis of how language is deployed for political ends—the question is a much more complicated one than he claims here.

There exist actual good books that can teach you how to write better, instead of patting you on the back and allowing you to tut-tut at those plebians who write things that are "outright barbarous". Pinker's The Sense of Style is one of those; Ann Lamott's Bird by Bird is another. There also exist much better (and more accurate and scientific) resources about how language actually affects the way we think about things. Benjamin Bergen's Louder than Words is an excellent start, and virtually anything from Lakoff's long list of publications is worth reading—Metaphors We Live By is the classic, but Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things in particular is excellent from his more recent work.

'Stein on Writing',
'Bird by Bird',
'The Writer's Portable Mentor',
and 'On Writing', are some books on writing worth reading.

Hi. Some excellent suggestions in this thread already. Here are a few more.

1. Read great writing. If you want to write better nonfiction, read the masters of nonfiction. Michael Lewis. Tracy Kidder. Atul Gawande. Joseph Mitchell. Jon Krakauer. Christopher Hitchens. Tom Junod. If you want to write great fiction, read Murakami, Marquez, Palahniuk, Eggers, Hosseni, Oates, Atwood. (Shameless plug here, you can find stories by these folk at Byliner: http://www.byliner.com )

2. Read about writing. Some worthy books on this:

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King (really!)

The Practice of Writing, by David Lodge

The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard

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

Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd

To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction, by Phillip Lopate

3. As already mentioned upthread, practice. Write something every day.

4. If you're not confident in your writing, apply your MVP lessons. Write short sentences. Use as few words as possible. Rid your sentences of adjectives and adverbs. Study your verb choices. Ditch the complex punctuation and dependent clauses. Ask yourself, What's the least amount of "writing" necessary to convey this idea or image?

5. Have fun.

So many to choose from... your bookstore or library has an entire shelf devoted to this topic.

A few that I've read
John Gardner's -- On Fiction
How to Write a Blockbuster Novel
Story (more about screenwriting, but very useful to novelists)
Bird by Bird

None of these are particularly focused at the novice novel writer. Good luck!

For anyone doing a double-take on the essay's title being outlandish for 1954, that's her year of birth and this essay is an excerpt from her 1994 book Bird by Bird.

... By writing, like you said. It's no more complicated than that.

That you're asking this here leads me to believe there's some unknown (to me) internal resistance holding you back: start writing. Write some more. Then write some more.

You might be interested in books like "Bird by Bird" (Lamott) or "Do the Work" (Pressman) etc. (I've read BbyB a few times, and am re-reading/-listening to DtW again as I plow through some drudge work that's necessary, but irritating.)

Not that Strunk and White is bad, but it's a peculiar choice to list first because it is mediocre and there are so many other options which are better. At the very minimum, Strunk and White is a very contentious entry, and people (like me) will come out of the woodwork to attack it.

* Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, Joseph Bizup

* The Chicago Manual of Style (depending on what kind of writer you are, a different guide may suit you better)

* Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

* On Writing, Stephen King

Some books:

Two books by Erich Fromm, a German/American philosopher of the 50s/60s: The Art of Loving. Some points: To him love is a skill that has to be practiced and learned, love in a relationship is constant hard work, love of another is only possible if you first love yourself, and you cannot love another human being if you do not love mankind. A little bit later he published The Sane Society, a Marxist critique of capitalist society, how consumerism leads to self-alienation etc.

>Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism have in common that they offered the atomized individual a new refuge and security. These systems are the culmination of alienation. The individual is made to feel powerless and insignificant, but taught to project all of his human powers into the figure of the leader, the state, the "fatherland," to whom he has to submit and whom he has to worship. He escapes from freedom and into a new idolatry. All the achievements of individuality and reason, from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century are sacrificed on the altars of the new idols. ...built on the most flagrant lies, both with regard to their programs and to their leaders.

Sounds familiar?

- Donna Meadows' Thinking in Systems, how to model anything as an interconnected system, and how unseen positive and negative feedback loops cause unintended consequences in any system

- Anne Lammott's Bird by Bird - I have to write a lot for my work and this is the best primer on getting things out the door

- For the Australians: Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu, on how early white European settlers completely misunderstood indigenous agriculture, all the things that were lost when Europeans settled Australia, and what we can use today. Gives you a VERY different look at Australian history.

- Ha-Joon Chang's Economics: The User's Guide. Just came out, an absolutely amazing intro and look at modern economics, the flimsiness of neoliberalist thought, and how we need to use the tools of each economic school of thought to think about the economy, not getting stuck on one school

I'll add to this list my all-time favorite writing companion: Virginia Tufte's "Grammar As Style". It's been out of print forever, which is tragic, and, when you can find it, it usually sells for over $100 - even in rough shape. "Artful Sentences" is meant to replace "Grammar As Style", but I prefer the original. If you want to tie all the rules together so you can understand why we even have grammar in the first place and how truly magical grammar can be to shaping a sentence or paragraph, track down this book.

Interesting: Virginia Tufte is the mother of data visualization guru Edward Tufte.

(Other good books for writers and writers-in-training: "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamont, Stephen King's "On Writing" and a collection of letters on writing by F. Scott Fitzgerald, also called "On Writing". Oh, and please don't hate on White's "Elements of Style" --- it may be old, but it's foundational.)

Often recommended, but Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and Stephen King's On Writing are both autobiographies wrapped in textbook sheepskin. Writing advice that may seem obvious or trite is then backed up with beautiful vignettes.

Good writing is not necessarily good speech, as you've noted. Learning technical writing is a superpower — I would recommend The Essentials of Technical Communication. A chemistry teacher once introduced it alongside a Vonnegut quote:

"It would never occur to me, to look for the best minds of my generation in an undergraduate English department anywhere. I would certainly try the physics department or the music department first."

Technical writing and writing for emotional impact both have their place. Learn both, and learn when to employ them. You may find yourself appreciating that Thoreau quote one day.

Here is what she said:

bloggergirl 21 hours ago | link [dead]

I'll add to this list my all-time favorite writing companion: Virginia Tufte's "Grammar As Style". It's been out of print forever, which is tragic, and, when you can find it, it usually sells for over $100 - even in rough shape. "Artful Sentences" is meant to replace "Grammar As Style", but I prefer the original. If you want to tie all the rules together so you can understand why we even have grammar in the first place and how truly magical grammar can be to shaping a sentence or paragraph, track down this book.

Interesting: Virginia Tufte is the mother of data visualization guru Edward Tufte.

(Other good books for writers and writers-in-training: "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamont, Stephen King's "On Writing" and a collection of letters on writing by F. Scott Fitzgerald, also called "On Writing". Oh, and please don't hate on White's "Elements of Style" --- it may be old, but it's foundational.)

For working up the motivation to write I recommend "Bird by Bird" by Ann Lamont.

http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Some-Instructions-Writing-Life/dp...