Brainpickings has compiled a nice list of 9 writing resources. Some are oh so familiar, perhaps all are to you. But I’m glad to be reminded of them. And quotes such as this one by Kurt Vonnegut, which you’ve probably read a million times, yet here it is, staring you in the mind, staring down your muse and your critique group:

“Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.”

Mary Pickford, writing.

Stephen King’s On Writing is on the list. Even if you hate his books and believe he never should have been given a National Book Award, you will probably be really grateful for On Writing and, anyway, you can’t help but like lines like this one:

“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”

St. Jerome, writing.

Anne Lamott, RayBradbury are predictably (in a good way) on the list. Also Stanley Fish, whose How To Write A Sentence And How To Read One I have never read—and now I’m going to. I would have made it a list of ten, though, by adding Francine Prose’s Reading Like A Writer, which I have, but admit I’ve only partially read, but I will–I swear–finish the book–in a ‘soon’ sort of manner. Francine Prose was teaching at Bread Loaf the summer I was there. I remember watching her cross Bread Loaf’s lawns, her black hair in contrast with the eternally (infernally?) shimmering emerald grass, how she moved rather than walked, probably on her way to a workshop. She was a presence (with a capital P)–or so I mused, crumpled up in an Adirondack chair, open (empty) notebook on my lap, furious that after my first workshop at Bread Loaf, I had no idea who I was as a writer.

Here’s the link to the list.

The inimitable Francine Prose.