5 Books About Writing That Made Me a Better Writer

References for everything from note-taking to the history of publishing

Todd Brison
3 min readMay 18, 2021
Image purchased by the author via iStock

It’s odd work, making stuff for a living.

Yancey Strickler, one of my favorite writers and thinkers, put it best:

“Broadly, I am on the right path. I am doing intellectual work. I spend much of my time thinking and dreaming.

Day to day, I’m all over the place.”

That’s how my last couple of weeks have been — all over the place. Right now, I’m sitting in bed with a newly un-paralyzed french bulldog lying on my feet. Tim Denning and I are lining up a new deep dive into LinkedIn. Green beans are boiling on the stove. I’ve just gotten my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

The thoughts I’ve been exploring about fame, about art, about the internet, are all resting in my notes. I am too tired to fish them out.

So today, you get a list.

A practical, boring, helpful list.

Here are five of my favorite books I’ve read using since entering into this full-time writer/self-employment/stay-at-home-dog-dad thing.

1) How to Take Smart Notes

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