Read books about writers’ lives and improve your fiction writing

By Dennis Mellersh

Reading books about the lives of fiction writers can be an instructive and inspirational aspect of your literary journey, whether it is learning how to write a book of fiction, such as a novel, or a book-length collection of short stories.

Biographies of writers are usually written by writers familiar with the specialized genre of the writer they are discussing, and/or in a lot of cases by a writer who also writes in the same genre, such as being a novelist, short story writer, historian, or biography writer.

There is a lot of a writer’s life that goes into whatever books they have written, and it can be helpful for you as an emerging writer to understand how the events in a writer’s life and the influences in that writer’s life affected their writing.

It not only helps you understand that particular book writer, but can also give you insights into how you might construct your life as a writer.

Many aspects of our lives can be unpredictable and beyond our control, but one thing you can take charge of is how you will educate yourself to be writer with a specialty of writing books.

Biographies, or books about the lives of writers, often contain a lot of examination of the techniques of the writer under discussion, and that information can be helpful in your quest to learn how to write a book. Recently I have been reading a biography of the novelist John Steinbeck written by Jay Parini that is useful in this way.

Biographies of writers will often talk about books and writers that were a strong influence on the writer being discussed, and that information can be helpful to you. It will be even more productive if you follow up with further reading on the writing influences referred to in the biography.

As you have no doubt discovered by now, becoming a writer is often a difficult path to follow in your life. Reading books about the lives of writers can help provide you with some reassurance that choosing to live the life of a writer, in addition to being tough, can be fulfilling and rewarding.