Want something quick but razor sharp and very  unique? Look no farther than Mary Robison.  I tore through her newest novel “One D.O.A., One on the Way” this week and picked up another– “Why Did I Ever”– because I was so impressed. Reminiscent of authors like Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie, Robison’s minimalist style is an exercise in gorgeous wordsmithing. There’s also a veneer of southern gothic in these books, probably due to Robison’s upbringing in Mississippi and her professorships at southern universities. “One D.O.A., One on the Way” captures the chaos of post-Katrina New Orleans in appropriately fractured mini-paragraphs, building the tension so sneakily that we are shocked by its inevitable conclusion.

“Why Did I Ever” is its worthy predecessor, having been the book that pioneered Robinson’s minimalist style (suffering from an extended case of writer’s block, she scrawled the novel on index cards and then strung them together). It’s protagonist, named Money, dictates the slow crumbling of her word, the violent assault of her son, and her long drives to nowhere. Written with an elegance and sharpness that literally takes my breath away, I am racing through this book, unable to put it down at night.

Robison is an accessible writer, her books hauntingly unique. At least once as I read these books, I closed my eyes in jealousy at a wickedly perfect or perversely beautiful sentence.

In Greek mythology, the muses were the nine daughters of the god Zeus and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory.  They were thought to inspire the creation of literature and the arts and transmit the knowledge of poetry, history, dance, astronomy, music, and comedy. Their legacy is threaded through modern language with words such as ‘museum’, ‘musing’ and ‘amused’.  It is, however, most apparent in the seriousness that artists and writers give to finding ‘their muse’. What does this mean and how can finding your muse improve your writing?

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There are as many writing books as there are writers looking to get inspired by them.  And while I am a believer in the  old adage that there is only one rule for writing–if it works–I do think that some of these books give great advice on the process of writing and offer support for what is, at heart, a lonely and self-reflective art. Three of my all time favorite books on the craft of writing:

‘Writing Down the Bones’ by Natalie Goldberg    was one of the first writing books I ever  read    and it is still a go to    reference when I am  in  need of support and sustenance.    Both a  practitioner of Zen and a writer, her tips,  stories, and exercises are rooted in an  expansive and inspirational view of the self as    artist and a deep connection with life. This is a  great guide for those who write as an act of self  expression, discovery, and healing. It’s very  free form though I always found the exercises  to be extremely helpful to get me started when  I was stuck with writer’s block. Her other books  on writing as well as her memoirs are worth  picking up as well.

Brenda  Ueland’s ‘If You Want to Write: a Book About Art, Independence, and Spirit’ is, to me, the ultimate writing book. It is a must read for beginning writers, for those who have been discouraged, and for those who are looking to revisit what creativity really means. A journalist, author, and all around extraordinarily interesting woman, Ueland’s guide offers up several points to consider when writing but it’s also very supportive of everybody’s creativity. One of my favorite quotes by Ueland is “I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on  a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten, – happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another. ”

This third book is one that helped me understand the balance of writing. ‘The Writing Life’ by Annie Dillard is, like all of her work, clear eyed, unsentimental, meaty–a resource that I come back to in order to remind me why I write, who it’s for, and both how thankless a task it can be and how beautiful a life it creates. If you haven’t read anything by Dillard, please go out and find either ‘Holy the Firm’ or ‘Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek’  and immerse yourself in the perfect individuality of the ordinary world she presents.

I once had a dance instructor who changed my life. His name is Nii Armah Sowah and if you live in the Denver/Boulder area I highly recommend that you get to know him. He taught an African dance class at the University of Colorado and was the first person who taught me that we are all made to dance. Our bodies are made to move, he taught, our voices are made to sing. To pass judgement on dance and singing is to limit our self-expression and our ability to connect to others. It was an amazing idea and has stuck with me ever since.

Recently, I started thinking about this in terms of writing. I critique and ‘fix’ writing for a living, but I also believe that, like dance and song, writing should be accessible for everyone, regardless of ‘talent’. It seems sometimes that we are so focused on the publishing aspect of books that we completely ignore the process of writing and the many gifts it can bring.

Memoir in particular is a wonderful way for all of us to use writing as a tool of self expression and community building. It’s very accessible, both to write and to read and really has the ability to change our lives.

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Dialogue is one of the most important tools in your author’s skill box.  Done well it will bring your characters to life and anchor your prose. It will subtly tell your story gracefully. Unfortunately, dialogue is one of the hardest aspects of fiction to pull off well. Maybe it’s because we think it should be easy–I mean we have conversations every single day, putting them down on paper seems second nature. Or maybe it’s just that we’re uncomfortable with dialogue because we’re not sure what its purpose is in our story–we know we should have dialogue, that it’s useful, but aren’t quite sure why. So we stick it in and hope it works.

Whatever the reason, you shouldn’t sweat it because with some practice dialogue will become your best friend. Here’s how

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