What's Your Inspiration? Students, Craft Books, and a Whole Lot of Thinking

 On Monday, Amanda Wen shared some terrific sources for plot ideas. I've mentioned before that my story inspirations can come from the oddest little tidbits. Sometimes blog topics arise that way too.

Most of you know that in addition to writing, I teach English Language Arts to middle schoolers. This past year, I was also participating in a PhD study regarding the reading habits of boys. Those two things converged this past week in a way that sparked a blog idea.

I was reading an excerpt from a short story by Jack London with my 7th graders. I was struggling to focus on the text - too much on my mind, too tired, too stressed. I wondered, if I was struggling with lack of interest in the text, how were my students doing with it? So I posed the question for reflection and discussion. 

Their answers really intrigued me as both a teacher (connection to the PhD study) and as a writer (author's craft).

The question I posed was whether they were engaged with the story or if something about it had just made their brains shut down and/or made them tune out?

As expected, my struggling readers, well, they struggled. So most of them said they shut down or tuned out.

But a core group - of mostly boys - were totally engaged by the story. When I asked them why, their answer spoke to writer me. They said the author's use of language was what caught their attention. They felt like they were in the story experiencing it along with the character. Some of them also mentioned being intrigued by the descriptive words (which were defined in footnotes) because they learned something new.

At the time, I decided that Writer Cate needed to spend some time reflecting on that and what it meant for her craft. Then, over the weekend I stumbled across an article that focused on word choice and a writer's responsibility to make effective use of the arsenal of words available to us.

On some level, we're all aware that the words we choose define our voice. If we've been writing in the same genre for awhile, we've probably (consciously or not) adopted a tone suitable to our genre. Someone writing contemporary romantic suspense is not going to be using the same vocabulary as an author writing about Regency England or another writing Biblical fiction. Just like our covers are so different in the ways they reflect our chosen genre, so should our word choice be.

And that got me thinking about craft books.

(Sorry. My brain hops all over the place.)

There was a direct connection. The thoughts about word choice reminded me of a craft book I picked up years ago - Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan.

The cover is a bit faded, but the interior is rather pristine - because I never finished reading it.

That's the problem I have with craft books. I start out all gung ho, but then my brain fires up with the new ideas I learned, and I rush off to a manuscript to try them out. More often than not, the book sits neglected until something (like a class discussion) prompts me to pick it up again.

So I thought we could discuss craft books a bit today. I know people have very differing opinions about them. Some people swear by them. Ruthy has sworn off them (as she's only too happy to tell you.)

I confess. I'm a craft book junkie. I buy A LOT of them. I don't read them all, but I feel good knowing they're on my shelf waiting for the day something strikes my fancy. I like to pick them up from time to time and glance through them, maybe read a pertinent section.

There are some I have read in full and often reread. Anne LaMott's Bird by Bird comes to mind. That is the book that gave me the courage to be a writer because she let us know that real writers fail, and hate what they write, and just keep working. And when they're overwhelmed, they take it bird by bird.

So tell me, do you collect craft books? (And if you do, do you actually read them?)

Do you have a favorite?

Or do you abhor "craft" books and learn your craft from reading all the wonderful books in the genre you write?

Or something else?

I'm also celebrating this week because Texas Witness Threat made the Publishers Weekly Bestseller List, so I'm giving away a copy of the snake book to one person who mentions in the comments that they'd like to be in the drawing (print or ebook, your choice).