Tip 27: Read

Counting down to our next writing sprint. Writers as teachers. Books we love & learn from. Reading recs from Emma Gannon, Musa Okwonga & Bec.

🔊​ANNOUNCEMENT🔊​

A brief pause in newsletter service to announce that we’re hosting another 7-Day Writing Sprint from Monday 6th of May. 🙌​

Taking place over seven days, a sprint is a structured way to move your writing forward in daily steps. They’re fast and fun and involve lots of gifs - which keeps me (Chris) happy.

We’ve been running sprints in various ways for a decade and last month we experimented to see whether they would work on Substack. We’re pleased to say they did, albeit with a slightly-fiddly-but-hopefully-not-too-off-putting sign-up process.

Last month they were free but this May sprints are only available to paying subscribers of this newsletter. This is to ensure comments are kept private and to pay for our time. We hope you understand.

If you’d like the low down on sprints and details on how to join our Sprint Club to know what sprints are - read this post. ⬇️​

» Everything you need to know about our Substack 7 Day Writing Sprint

We hope see you on the starting line soon :)

BTW: if you sprinted with us last time, we’ve comped you a freebie sprint this month. If you don’t want to receive sprint posts you’ll need to unsubscribe from the Writing Sprint Club in your Substack settings. Substack will not allow us to do this for you - sorry! There’s a reminder how to do this in the post above. ⬆️​

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Want to write? Read

Hello 👋 Bec here, fresh from a week teaching writing with coaching at The Hurst in deepest Shropshire. It was an amazing full-circle moment as I returned to Arvon.

Read my backstory: How a writing block led to a breakthrough

What goes on inside an Arvon course is magical, unique¹ and subject to the Las Vegas Rule.²

While I won’t break the rule, there is something I can share - a writing tip that is mostly free and available to many of us. And that is to read.

The great teachers

My co-tutor Musa Okwonga and I shared readings every day in the workshops. We discussed and learned from writers on the page; their craft and practice inspired us to write. Whenever someone asked a question, we offered advice, but also suggested books to read.

Our guest writer on Wednesday, the creative multi-hyphenate

Emma Gannon

describes herself on her Substack as: “a total bookworm, obsessed” so books came up in conversation and recommendations were generously offered.

➡️ See Emma’s Note about her visit...

We might not have access to writing teachers, coaches and mentors. We might not be able to pay for writing courses and retreats. But we can still learn, as

Elizabeth Gilbert

wrote in Big Magic:

“Do you want to study under the great teachers? Is that it?

Well, you can find them anywhere. They live on the shelves of your library; they live on the walls of museums; they live in the recordings made decades ago. Your teachers don’t even need to be alive to educate you masterfully. No living writer has ever taught me more about plotting and characterisation than Charles Dickens has taught me - and needless to say I never met him during office hours to discuss it. All I had to do in order to learn from Dickens was to spend years privately studying his novels like they were holy scripture, and then to practice like the devil on my own.”

- Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

Reading recommendations from last week

Many books were recommended across the week. As we were studying life writing, memoir, essays and personal stories were front of mind. If you ask me today what books I recommend, it will be different to last week and will change again for tomorrow. Likewise, I am sure that Musa and Emma will offer different books by the time this newsletter lands.

Before I get to some selected recommendations, I urge you to check out In The End, It Was All About Love and One of Them by Musa Okwonga and The Success Myth and Olive by Emma Gannon.

Here are a few book recs related to life writing and the practice of writing - and indeed living.

From me, Bec Evans

• The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

• The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

• Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Awaeke Emezi

• Write it all Down by Cathy Rentzenbrink

• Your Story Matters by Nikesh Shukla

From Musa Okwonga

• Every Day Is For The Thief by Teju Cole

• Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth by Warsan Shire

• The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

• Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

From Emma Gannon

• Knife by Salman Rushdie

• The Instant by Amy Liptrot

• Steering by Starlight by Martha Beck

• The Practice by Seth Godin

What books do you recommend?

One of the writers came to a tutorial last week clutching a well-thumbed copy of Daily Rituals by

Mason Currey

. She told me that each day she reads a creative’s routine and is reminded how different we all are.

What book would you recommend to a writer? Are there any that have inspired you to start writing or helped you get the words down? Which writers do you return to again and again?³ I’d love to hear - pop a comment below or click the heart to share your love of reading.

But also, if you don’t read, that’s OK. I once heard a podcast with bestselling author Adam Kay where he admitted not being a reader. Yes, you can learn so much from reading but it’s not for everyone. No judgement.⁴

Keep writing, Bec

1.

Emma Parnell

wrote a post about her experience being on the course last week. If you’d like to find out more, read: Talking with strangers: Attending a residential writing course

2. This comes from the phrase ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.’ It’s probably the only way a writing retreat is like Vegas in offering a protected space - everything that is discussed will not leave the retreat, in this case, playwright John Osborne’s former home and grounds at The Hurst. Or perhaps writing retreats are more like casinos than you think. You’ll have to go to one to find out :)

3. I share my monthly reading recommendations over on Instagram @becevans_writes. Here’s many of the books I read to prepare for the course and here’s another post with April’s reads.

4. OK a little judgement.