This week: How Useful Are "How To" Books? Edited by: Jeff  
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"Do not over-intellectualize the production process.
Try to keep it simple: tell the darned story."
-- Tom Clancy
About The Editor: Greetings! My name is Jeff and I'm a guest editor for this week's For Authors Official Newsletter! I've been a member of Writing.com since 2003, and have edited more than 350 newsletters across the site during that time. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me via email or the handy feedback field at the bottom of this newsletter! 
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How Useful Are "How To" Books?
When I was in film school, I read a ton of books about screenwriting and the film industry. Many were assigned by professors for various classes, but I also pursued them on my own. I read classics like Screenplay by Syd Field and Story by Robert McKee and The Screenwriter's Bible by David Trottier, as well as a great many other titles both well-known and obscure. In the years since graduating, there have been a number of other popular titles added to the market, including Save The Cat by the late Blake Snyder.
Eventually, I branched out into seriously writing other types of fiction, and found an entire library's worth of advice books on how to write. For example, did you know there are over 50,000 titles in Amazon's Reference > Writing, Research & Publishing Guides section? There are so many they have to be divided into a number of subcategories, including:
 Academic & Commercial
Children's & Young Adult
Composition
Editing
Fiction
Genre Fiction
Journalism
Newspapers & Magazines
Nonfiction
Play & Scriptwriting
Poetry
Publishing & Books
Research
Technical
Writing Skills
Each of these subcategories contains hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands of titles. Over the years, I've probably read well over 100 books on the topic of writing, everything from the nuts and bolts of diction and syntax and language rules, to specific genre conventions and tropes, to habits, to analyses and advice about the professional marketplace, to general writing topics like plotting and character development.
Based on all of that reading, I've developed three major takeaways that I'll share with you here:
1. There are very few absolutes.
2. There is no one-size fits all.
3. Take what works for you, leave the rest.
Whether we're talking about grammar rules, or plotting, or ways to get your work published and/or otherwise out in the world, there simply isn't a magical answer that fits all circumstances. With something as subjective and varied as writing, there is no guaranteed path to success, where if you just check all the boxes on this very specific checklist, you'll get where you want to be as a writer. There aren't even any guarantees that what works from a substance or even style perspective will translate from one piece of writing to the next.
"How to" books about writing are, by nature, written from a place of authority. After all, who would buy a book about how to write a bestseller from someone who said, "I have no idea what I'm talking about?" And who would buy a book about proper use of the English language from someone who admitted that most of the "rules" that they're espousing can be bent or outright broken in a lot of circumstances? That leads a lot of them to, at best, provide a system by which you can whittle down the broad and nebulous goal of "writing" down into something more manageable. At worst, it becomes prescriptive and you're told what you should be doing.
Which is why the third takeaway is the most important. Many writers are searching for ways to improve their writing. Some seek that out through books, others seek it out places like here on Writing.com, where they can get feedback on their work. Regardless of where advice is being sought, it's important for authors to take the time to assess what they're being told, and to decide whether that piece of information applies to them. In the context of a review, maybe it's a creative suggestion. In the context of a "how to" book, maybe it's an anecdote, or a process, or a strategy, or even a "rule."
The trick to making advice work for you is to take what works and discard the rest. If that's a bunch of good technical suggestions but some creative ones you don't agree with, take the technical suggestions and discard the creative. If it's a "how to" system with specific steps, try it out and see if it works for you. If it does, or if part of it does, take those elements that work and discard the rest.
In all those 100+ books on the subject of writing that I read, about 20% were completely useless and offered very little value. At the other end of the spectrum, I can probably count on my fingers the number of titles that were solid gold all the way through. The rest of them, the vast majority? Had maybe a few good points or useful ideas here and there, and the rest was chaff. And, by the way, useful can also be something you try and doesn't work for you, what can either reinforce the practices you already have in place, or help you narrow down successful strategies in the future.
Ultimately, the person who's going to best make the determination about how to write... is you. Outside of constructive feedback that you can use to improve your work and your process, everyone else - regardless of whether they're academics, successful authors in their own right, or fellow members of a writing website like this one - are simply offering their individual opinion on what they think would work best.
As an author, your job is to listen to the voices that make sense to you and make you better.
Everything else can fall by the wayside.
Until next time,
Jeff
If you're interested in checking out my work:
"Blogocentric Formulations"
"New & Noteworthy Things"
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This month's official Writing.com writing contest is:
I also encourage you to check out the following items:
EXCERPT: My hands began to look old before I turned fifty because I've been so hard on them over the years. I like to work with my hands, and I do. A lot. And as a female who once closed her eyes tight and leapt with both feet into a...tidal pool, I don't so much sink or swim. I dig frantically in the sand. And then I do it again, and again.
EXCERPT: Susan was five years old when she and I met. Shortly before her mother and I married. Whom I love dearly. That was over 35 years ago, and I honestly have to say there were some awkward moments early on in our instant family. Her Mom and I are still married, but this is about Susan.
EXCERPT: When I was a child, I woke up in a room colored with blood and death. It was a common occurrence—my sister got to remodel our bedroom. She chose black, white, and crimson for her color scheme, and I had no vote in how it looked. Granted, I was in elementary school and she was a teenager, but it rankled. To make matters worse, my other sister crocheted two granny square afghans for our beds in those colors. She put hours of labor into them, and I had to be grateful for something I wanted to burn. I slept under blood-red roses and pretended to like it.
EXCERPT: Sneaking through her teeth, my dog's tiny pink tongue breaches the barrier of her closed mouth. She is napping, ears splayed inside out, eyes rolled surreptitiously back in her head. I can see only a hint of her hazy green irises and the blush-colored outline of her lids. They mist rheumy in the summer heat, allergies at play. Her nose twitches, Lilliputian size quivers as if something delicious has touched her teensy snout; the tongue stays stable though hovering just outside the environment of her mouth.
EXCERPT: Being a Christian while supporting the separation of church and state can weigh heavy on me at times... While I believe what I believe as a Quaker, I still don't want a single religion nor denomination becoming the Official or State Religion (or both).
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Feedback from "For Authors Newsletter (January 16, 2019)" about leaving my tenure as a regular editor of the For Authors NL:
vada  writes:
Hi Jeff, I shall miss your regular, thoughtful, informative newsletters, but look forward to your guest spots. Also want to wish you and your wife well with foster parenting and adoption. Take care, Vada
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For Authors: July 06, 2022 Issue [#11440]
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