I discovered three excellent resources while stuck on Planet Covid Crazy back in 2021 and 2022. One is by a famous writer. One is by an experienced journalist who is also a writing instructor and editor. The last was published about a decade ago by a genius non-fiction author with a weird name I had never heard prior to March 2020. All three of these books are highly recommended for every kind of online writer — young, old, experienced, novice. They’re also vital reading for novelists, editors, online publishers, and anyone else trying to run a business in this nutso field of words and books and screens.

You may have read about some or all of these books in the past, but I’m giving my take here.

First-Person Journalism: A Guide to Writing Personal Nonfiction with Real Impact

Martha Nichols (Routledge, 2022)

I wish this book had been available back in the ‘early ’80s when I was just a little spud with hopes and dreams. My top goal as a young writer just out of college was to get an 800-word personal essay published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine “About Men” column (never happened). In those days we mostly called pieces like that essays. Even if someone used the term personal essay, it didn’t register as very defining. Here and now in the 2020s, attempts at first-person journalism are everywhere. But there’s a difference between quality work that truly connects, and essays that are either kind of blasé or ones that just completely miss the mark. The first general rule of writing is obvious enough: know how to produce good, honest stuff so that readers trust you and want to spend time reading what you’re serving up.

First-Person Journalism is centered on 9 chapters detailing different elements of personal essay composition. That sounds a bit dry and overly academic. The book is anything but. Martha Nichols, a cofounder of TalkingWriting.com and a faculty instructor in journalism at the Harvard University Extension School, knows all the interesting nooks, crannies, and byways of non-fiction creativity. She injects humor and insightful anecdotes about writing and storytelling into every chapter of this book. She also keeps us on our toes with discussions about the politics of writing and the moral questions connected to personal journalism.

Her book provides advice on journalism ethics and how to handle empathy as a reporter and a writer working on emotional projects. In addition, First-Person Journalism is chock-full of useful lists, tip boxes, and fast lessons. Near the end of the book is a valuable set of 25 First-Person Journalism Rules that every onliner needs to be aware of. As an example, here’s #5, which seems to me essential for all of us:

“Spend 15 minutes a day researching a topic you like.”

First-Person Journalism is an inspiring handbook loaded with useful information and exercises for even the most seasoned journalist. To be honest, it should also be a primary text for any writer and editor at online sites, as well as bloggers, serial tweeters, or Facebook aficionados. It’s a first-person writing world for almost all of us now in one way or another. My hat is off to Martha Nichols for offering up the first true guide for anyone who understands the significance of being a writer in the 21st century.

Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different

Chuck Palahniuk (Grand Central Publishing, 2020)

Chuck Palahniuk is the author of the cult hit novel Fight Club (on which the 1999 blockbuster movie is based). He’s written over 20 other books. Consider This is kind of a writer’s memoir as well as a how-to. And because this is Chuck Palahniuk, we get unconventional and at times transgressive advice.

He goes deep into several key aspects of writing: Texture; Authority; Tension; Process. In one way or another, most established authors write about those things. But Palahniuk is constantly questioning what his teachers and mentors tell him about those major issues. Every writer should question everything their teachers and mentors tell them. They should probably also question everything supposed experts tell them in books, too.

What I loved most about Consider This is that Palahniuk can’t help being a contrarian, transgressive, reverse counter-revolutionary, in-your-face thinker about the writing process. He questions standard literary wisdom better than anyone I’ve read since Charles Bukowski (or maybe Henry Miller). I kept thinking: “If we’re not breaking rules, we really aren’t very useful.”

Palahniuk often makes his points by starting a paragraph with: “If you were my student…” As in:

If you were my student I’d tell you a joke. I’d ask, ‘What do you call a black man who flies a plane?’

In so many ways, this book is an offering from an author who knows more than almost anyone living about all the wanky angles of the writing life. He’s clearly letting us all know that he’s ready to give his own special version of a writing workshop. That makes Consider This a perfect investment for any writer serious about thinking and creating outside box. I’m sure Palahniuk would charge more than the $27.00 hardcover fee for six weeks worth of face time blabber.

By the way, the answer he gives to the question above is his way of demonstrating the idea of “the rapid relief of tension.” It’s all about shifting expectations and anticipation of the audience. Sometimes I wonder if a lot or writers really just wanted to be comedians. Whatever. The more the merrier.

“As the answer, I’d shout, ‘A pilot, you fucking racist!’” Boom! Shift expectations properly and you makes the reader the butt of the joke. Dangerous, if you’re a comedian, perhaps, but an important skill if you’re a writer. I don’t know if there are any writing books that talk about this, but one important function of a certain brand of literature is to keep readers humble and able to laugh at themselves.

So much in Consider This is twisted insight, which makes for memorable and useful reading. If you’ve read more than three memoir/how-to writer’s books, Consider This will be a wonderful breath of fresh air. Let the insights roll.

Several short sentences about writing

Verlyn Klinkenborg (Vintage Books, 2013)

Somewhere on the internet early in the pandemic I stumbled on a comment by a famous writer saying that Verlyn Klinkenborg‘s book Several short sentences about writing is proof that he’s God. The last time I encountered that kind of hyperbolic quote was in 1972 before I’d ever seriously listened to Eric Clapton(who apparently has decided that he is God).

Anyway, I bought the aforementioned book and began reading as soon as I received it in the mail. What a vital document for everyone who is truly serious about the written word — from Chuck Palahniuk to Martha Nichols to Stephen King to Charles Bukowski.

Klinkenborg is, among other things, a past member of the editorial board of The New York Times. He’s also been a writing teacher at colleges around the United States for decades, including both Harvard and Yale.

At first you might think this book is about the mechanics of writing sentences. That’s quite true, actually. But it’s so much more.

This is a book that belongs within toilet-reach of every writer out there.

If ever there was a Zen manual on how to think about being creative with narrative and prose, Several short sentences is it. Like both Nichols and Palahniuk, Klinkenborg goes beyond the boundaries of normal and basic writing wisdom. I’ve always had a vague awareness about the way that my work has connected to a certain type of thinking for me and a certain awareness I have of the world. One thing that Several short sentences does is crystallize those issues and make the cognitive process of writing a bit clearer.

Also, this book does not look or act like your basic English teacher’s instruction manual. There are no paragraphs per se, or chapters or sections. It’s kind of a singular compendium of aphorisms, rules, adages, dictums, maxims, pearls, and quickie pieces of advice and common sense about writing and perfection. If there could be a form of writing yoga, you’d find it in Several short sentences. Here’s a line chosen at random:

You’ll learn to remember that your sentences don’t acquire their final inertia until you release them.

My take on that offering is that you get to tweak and modify to your heart’s content until you send it out into the world, at which point, it’s done and it’s not really your’s anymore because along with all its readers, that piece is as independent and static as a stone in the wilderness.

Two-hundred pages of vital, customized, wisdom-based sentences — some short, some long, some funky, some super basic, some grouped, some weirdly mind blowing, all presented kind of like a long form poem on the philosophy of writing.

To give Klinkenborg’s masterpiece the highest compliment I know of: this is a book that belongs within toilet-reach of every writer out there.

Final note

During the two years we all had together on Planet Covid Crazy, I’ve thought a lot about how social media makes everyone an actual, real-deal writer. They say it’s 5 billion of us. That’s a shitload of people–more than half the human population of the planet in some kind of writer’s mode for a period of time (sometimes short, sometimes long) during nearly every day. One important question, though, is how many of those people are “good” writers (in whatever language). That’s why books like the three described here are worth people‘s time. You gotta write a ton to get any good at it, but you also gotta read about good writing to get even better.

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Note: This article was originally published on Medium.com in March of 2022. You can check it out and other posts I’ve made to various Medium publications here.