Episode 047 - Creative Writing/Books About Writing

Book Club for Masochists: a Readers’ Advisory Podcast

This month our genre is Creative Writing/Books About Writing! With real, live, award-winning authors! (Well, one anyway.) We discuss our own experiences with these sort of books, why people might read them, and whether hairstyles might affect someone’s ability to stop time. Plus: Meghan reveals her knowledge about accordions!

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In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Books We Read This Month

• Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life by Natalie Goldberg
• The Last Word: Reviving the Dying Art of the Eulogy by Julia Cooper
• The Elements of Style (Illustrated) by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, illustrated by Maira Kalman
• Steering the Craft: A Twentieth-first Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Manga in Theory and Practice: The Craft of Creating Manga by Hirohiko Araki
• Triggering Town: Letters and Essays on Writing Poetry by Richard Hugo
• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
• We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Books and Other Media We Mention

• Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers (featuring RJ!)
• Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman
• A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
• Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
• Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror with Stephen King
• Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg
• Hamlet's Hit Points by Robin D. Laws
• The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories by Christopher Booker
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki
• Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku by William J. Higginson
• Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life
• How to Be An Accordion Player: An Instructional Booklet with Illustrations by Geoff Berner
• • Accordion Noir Festival
  • Accordion Noir radio show
  • Accordion Babes Pin-Up Calendar
  • Daloy Polizei (Fuck The Police) by Geoff Berner

Links, Articles, and Things

• Running the Game by Matthew Colville
• Game Master Tips
• Jon Newell’s D&D blog
• Weird Fiction episode of our podcast featuring Jon Newell
• Can I Get An Amen? by Nate Harrison, the story of the famous "Amen Break" (That’s the “classic beats” music sample in the episode)
• Manga In Theory and Practice discussion in the “Wait, What?” podcast.
• “Half rhyme or imperfect rhyme, sometimes called near-rhyme or lazy rhyme or slant rhyme, is a type of rhyme formed by words with similar but not identical sounds.” (Wikipedia)
• Dingbat (Wikipedia)
• Dear Dick by Mackenzie Cole
• Hark! RJ’s podcast (that we forgot to mention) that reviews holiday music. Check it out!

Questions

• Do you have any favourite writing inspiration type books?
• What’s your favourite writing exercise?
• Should authors be reading creative writing how-tos or just read more books?

Ask us questions for our 50th episode!

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Join us again on Tuesday, March 6th when we’ll catch you up on what other things we’ve been reading.

Then come back on Tuesday, March 20th when we’ll be talking about Southern Gothic books!