Books like On Writing
Stephen King's memoir of the craft: his childhood, his early struggles and drinking, the toolbox of grammar and habit he swears by, and the 1999 accident that nearly ended his life while he was writing the book.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of On Writing
Bird by Bird
Lamott's guide to writing and the writing life, built on permission to write terrible first drafts and the advice her father once gave her brother, stuck on a school report about birds: take it bird by bird.
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
Sedaris on quitting cigarettes by moving to Tokyo for three months, on domestic life with Hugh in Paris and Normandy, and on the neighbours, strangers and medical complaints that keep finding him.
Novelist as a Vocation
Essays on how Murakami became a novelist, from the baseball game where he decided to write his first book to the daily routine and stubbornness that have kept him writing since.
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
More family stories from Sedaris, from the neighbours who refused to own a television to his foul-mouthed younger brother's wedding and life with Hugh in Paris and London.
Chronicles: Volume One
Dylan's memoir, which skips from his arrival in Greenwich Village in 1961 to the making of New Morning and Oh Mercy, and back to his Minnesota boyhood.
Bossypants
Tina Fey's memoir, from improv comedy to Saturday Night Live to 30 Rock, told with the timing of a perfect sketch.
One Writer's Beginnings
Welty's Harvard lectures on growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, on her parents and her reading, and on the habits of listening and watching that made her a writer.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Murakami reflects on decades of long-distance running and what the discipline has taught him about writing, ageing, and pain.
An Angel at My Table
Janet Frame's autobiography, from a poor childhood in Oamaru through eight years in mental hospitals to her escape into writing and to Europe.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
A class on how fiction works, built around close readings of seven Russian short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol, from the course Saunders has taught for decades.
Aké: The Years of Childhood
Soyinka's memoir of growing up in a parsonage compound in Abeokuta in western Nigeria in the 1930s and 40s, up to the age of eleven.
Living to Tell the Tale
The first volume of García Márquez's memoirs, from his childhood in his grandparents' house in Aracataca to his years as a young journalist in Cartagena and Barranquilla, up to 1955.