Michelle Richmond

7 Inspiring Books for Writers in Any Genre

Every writer must be a reader first, and the best education you can get is by reading. The most inspiring books for writers aren’t necessarily books about writing. Remember the first novel you wanted to tell others about? The first story that stuck in your mind? The first character you wished you could know in real life?

Reading widely across genres is essential. If you want to write literary fiction, reading crime novels can give you a stronger grasp on plot. If you want to write thrillers, reading literary novels can help you better understand the nuances of character development. Immerse yourself in novels, story collections, essays, poetry. Read for pleasure, and read with analytical eye. See what makes the writing tick. Those books will the foundation of your education in writing.

But when the well is dry, when you go to your computer or your notebook and feel adrift, books about writing can get you into the writing mood again. Here are seven books for writers that I recommend to students in my novel writing class, ranging from the practical to the inspiring.

First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Write, and Life, by Joe Moran

This isn’t just a book about what makes a wonderful sentence (although it is that). It’s also a book about how sentences lead us into our writing, how sentences guide us to discovery and help an idea become a story. This book is an inspiration for those of us who geek out on language and a primer for anyone who wants to know how a great sentence is made, and why it matters. Get it on Amazon.

Novel Starter: 50 Days of Exercises and Advice to Help You Start Your Novel, from the Fiction Attic Press Master Class Series

Designed to help writers kickstart their novels, Novel Starter features 50 days of assignments, prompts, and inspiration, arranged in a progression to help you get the most out of your writing practice. Ten-minute prompts help you break through writers’s block, generative exercises help you write scenes and chapters, and craft keys demystify the fundamentals of narrative craft. If you want a 50-day boot camp to get your novel off the ground, this is the book for you. Get Novel Starter on Amazon.

Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in The Writer’s Life, by Bonnie Friedman

According to Friedman, “Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences, they are the ones who keep writing.” While the other books on this list focus on narrative craft, Writing Past Dark is the book you’ll turn to when you feel gobsmacked by your novel, and you’re not sure how (or why) to continue. Get it on Amazon.

Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, by Patricia Highsmith

You don’t have to be a writer of crime fiction or thrillers to learn a great deal from this slim, to-the-point guide on creating suspense in fiction. Highsmith’s advice on everything from plotting to getting past “snags” is invaluable to novelists in any genre. As a writer of literary fiction, I found that it provided me with a much-needed kick in the pants. Get it on Amazonor Bookshop.org.

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert

Listen to this audiobook whenever you think, “Why am I doing this? Can I really do this?” Gilbert is like a cheerleader standing on the sidelines of your writing life. Get it at Bookshop.org or Audible.

The Apprentice Writer: Essays, by Julian Green

A refreshing, wide-ranging collection of essays by a French-American writer. While the essays cover various subjects such as translation and Paris neighborhoods, the book is worth reading for the essays “How a Novelist Begins,” “Where do Novels Come From?”, and “Lectures on Writing.” This one isn’t that easy to find, but if you do stumble across it, be sure to buy it!

On Writing:A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King

By the time I got around to reading this modern classic by one of the most prolific writers of our time, I’d already published three novels. I wish I’d found it sooner! While King’s smart, down-to-earth memoir/writing lesson is a must-read for beginning novelists, fiction writers at any stage of their careers will find much to admire and be inspired by. Consider it a crash course in how to write fiction that people want to read. Get it at Bookshop.org or Audible.

Letters to a Young Writer, by Colum McCann

This wide-ranging book by Pulitzer Prize winning author and long-time teacher McCann is one of the most inspiring books I’ve ever read on writing. McCann talks about how to focus on the work instead of the ego, how to get past envy, how to work with an agent, and why exhaustion is an essential part of the writing process. If you’re in a slump, this brilliant little book will pull you out of it. Get it on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

Michelle Richmond is the New York Times bestselling author of THE WONDER TEST, THE MARRIAGE PACT, and six other novels and story collections. She mentors writers through Fiction Master Class.

Silicon Valley novel tackles achievement obsession

Michelle Richmond author of Silicon Valley novel THE WONDER TEST

My new Silicon Valley novel, THE WONDER TEST, hits shelves today. In a review of THE WONDER TEST for the San Francisco Chronicle, Anita Felicelli writes,

“Contemporary fiction set in or around Silicon Valley doesn’t always reach far enough with its absurdity and speculation.. Richmond’s eighth work of fiction, “The Wonder Test,” hits the right notes. It is a madcap suspense novel with a clever premise.”

In THE WONDER TEST, recently widowed FBI agent Lina Connerly relocates from New York City to an affluent suburb in Silicon Valley with her teenaged son, Rory, to clear out her father’s home and get her life back in order after a series of traumatic setbacks.

After enrolling Rory in the public school, which is obsessed with an annual exam called the Wonder Test that has put the small town of Greenfield on the map, Lina is drawn into a mystery involving local teens who go missing. Meanwhile, colleagues back in New York keep trying to rope her back into and old espionage case that needs her attention.

What a blast this novel was to write! Inspired in part by a move to a small town south of San Francisco 12 years ago, and in part by nearly 25 years as an FBI spouse, this “sharply written, subtly satirical thriller” (Publishers Weekly) imagines high-achieving parents and communities in Silicon Valley willing to put their children through the most extreme paces in pursuit of excellence. Oddly enough, this Silicon Valley novel also pays homage to Shirley Jackson, author of the famous short story “The Lottery”–a story about good citizens committing heinous crimes. Jackson lived and wrote for years in the neighborhood where THE WONDER TEST is set.

THE WONDER TEST is also about grief: how we go on and rebuild our lives after the foundation has crumbled, and how work can be a solid force that helps us survive the worst. Did I mention it’s also a bit of a spy novel?

The most enjoyable part of the book, however, was writing the WONDER TEST questions at the beginning of each chapter, like “Square feet is to cubic feet as time is to what?” and “Provide examples to illustrate the term ‘diminishing returns’ without providing so many examples as to achieve diminishing returns.” The questions were inspired by many years of elementary school homework, during which my husband, son and I attempted to find the “right” answer for a series of increasingly absurd standardized test questions.

“Richmond’s (The Marriage Pact) latest is a two-in-one winner: a gripping thriller set in a Stepford-esque California suburb, and a story of surviving loss and building family bonds. With a realistic protagonist, well-described setting, and an uber-creepy villain, it will please readers who like their stories with action and heart in equal measure.”—Liz French, Library Journal

I talked with Jessica Zack of San Francisco Chronicle Datebook about the story behind THE WONDER TEST, and how the seemingly far-fetched so often comes to pass.

You can buy the book at your local independent bookstore, or you can purchase it online through your favorite retailer.

Buy indie: Get THE WONDER TEST at Bookshop.org

Also available on Amazon / Barnes & Noble

Add THE WONDER TEST on Goodreads

Walking in Paris – Park Monceau to Batignolles, a Beautiful Goodbye

During our final week in Paris at the end of October 2020, I ventured out for one last walk to Batignolles. Although traffic had returned to the boulevards, the city still felt deserted. Travel from the United States to the EU was still restricted, so the only Americans in town were expats like us. We had lived the first eight months of the pandemic in the City of Light. I had stirrings of affection for Paris I’d never felt before the pandemic. We’d all been in this together for such a long time. Now, when I saw the clerk at the Franprix or the machine-gun toting gendarmes along Avenue Gabriel, our “bonjours” held more warmth, our nods more familiarity.

On that quiet autumn Tuesday I set out from our home in the 8th arrondissement under a gray sky, walking the block and a half along Rue Rembrandt to Parc Monceau. The park had been my oasis in the center of the urban storm, green and vibrant in a city of browns and grays. On countless days, I had escaped our apartment and the book I didn’t feel like writing to walk through the park and order a crepe from the snack stand beside the carousel.

Crepes in parc monceau — Parc Monceau crepe stand

That Tuesday I skipped the crepe, as I had one thing on my mind: coffee. I exited the park, veered right on Ave. Georges Berger, and crossed Malsherbes, where Berger becomes Rue Legendre. The light caught me at the corner of Legendre and Toqueville, in front of the old brick house on the corner (19 Rue Legendre), so out of place among the whitewashed buildings.

I crossed the busy Rue de Rome, where ugly modern apartment buildings tower over the train tracks. The first time we walked this route, the day after our arrival in Paris, we were searching for our nephew Jack’s favorite restaurant, Crepe Couer. We didn’t yet know that everything closes in Paris in August, and the few things that don’t close for the entire month do close on Sunday.

By the time we reached Batignolles in the 107 degree heat, our son was hangry, and I was regretting the move from Northern California, where beaches are always a few minutes away and the fog keeps a lid on the heat. Crepe Couer was closed. The only open restaurant we could find, Brutus, had a line out the door. Once seated, we sweated and waited and sweated some more, thirsty and out of sorts. Eventually the crepes came, and so did the cider (though not the water, as we didn’t yet know you must request un carafe d’eu if you want water with your meal). It was delicious, and forever after Brutus was our favorite crepe place in Paris.

…

Consent by Vanessa Springora

In Consent, Vanessa Springora delivers a heartbreaking, startling account of her adolescent relationship with one of France’s former literary stars, Gabriel Matzneff, when Matzneff was 50 and Springora was only 14 years old. What stands out in this memoir is the complicity of adults in Matzneff’s crimes. Springora’s mother, famous philosophers, renowned television personalities, politicians, and many in the literary establishment were not only aware that Matzneff was grooming young adolescent girls and boys; these powerful and respected people heaped praise upon the novels and diaries in which Matzneff chronicled his abuse.

After decades of torment and stalking, seeing her name and likeness used in book after book to enhance her abuser’s literary reputation and fame, Springora finds the strength to tell her own story and take hold of the narrative. A clear picture of the toll sexual abuse takes on survivors, and a stark rebuke of the ingrained culture in French intellectual circles that condoned and celebrated the abuse.

Buy Consent on Bookshop.org / Amazon

Companion read: La Familia Grande by Camille Kouchner

Thanks to Netgalley and HarperVia for providing a review copy of this book.