Required reading

In my study, a corner of shelf space is devoted to how-to manuals, books I read with a red pen and highlighter in hand. These are my life savers, the guides I return to whenever I'm floundering.

Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway - the closest thing to a creative writing text book you can get and fully worth the price tag.

In Appropriate edited by Kim Davids Mander - This collection of interviews with Canadian authors tackles the question: how do you write from outside your perspective and should you even try? This is absolutely essential reading for anyone who is trying to conjure characters whose ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and/ or disability are not their own.

Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing by and About Indigenous Peoples by Gregory Younging - And this one is essential for everyone in the publishing industry especially crucial for settler/ immigrant authors who have Indigenous characters in their work.

From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler - immensely helpful when I was first starting to work on The Boat People. Butler advocates a system of imagining individual scenes, jotting them down on cue cards, then once you have sufficient cards, organizing them into an outline. And then putting pen to paper to write a first draft. I fell down on the outline part but being able to take each scene as they came, one at a time, really made the prospect of writing a first draft less overwhelming.

Aspects of the Novel by EM Forster - short and sweet, illuminating for readers as well as writers.

How Fiction Works by James Wood - teaches you how to take apart literature as you would a clock so you can understand what works, what doesn't, and most importantly why. Wood taught me how to read like a writer, critically and carefully.

Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction by Jeff Vandermeer. This book is a delight.

Confession: I’m not a fan of Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. It’s amusing but was maybe too rudimentary for the stage I was at when I first read it.