This week I highlight five books on writing that I return to again and again for encouragement, inspiration and advice.

1. Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott
Part memoir, part writing manifesto for the insecure

Favorite tip: Lamott’s image for quieting the voices of people who aren’t there, such as the “vinegar-lipped Reader Lady, who says, primly, ‘Well, that’s not very interesting, is it?’”

Here’s how it’s done: “Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a mason jar. And so on… Then imagine that there is a volume-control button on the bottle… turn it all the way down… and get back to your shitty first draft.”

2. The Artful Edit, by Susan Bell
Original, practical book on the art of the self-edit

Favorite tip: Watch out for slouchy words that drag your sentences down.

“Certain words have good posture, others slump,” Bell writes. “Present participles, or what I call the “ing” words, tend to slump.”

I also use her advice for gaining perspective on my work (change the font!).

3. The Situation and the Story, by Vivian Gornick
A memoirist on the twin narratives that weave through every story like a double helix.

“Every work of literature has both a situation and a story,” Gornick writes. “The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.”

Favorite tip: Based on the idea in Gornick’s book, I once marked the situation and the story in a memoir using different colored post-its. This helped me see how the author wove them together.

4. Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd
A writer and his long-time editor talk craft

Favorite tip: The use of the “brilliance,” which is defined as “a generalization, a summarizing statement that doesn’t seem didactic.”

It addresses the reader’s question: “How are we supposed to feel about all this?”

In every blog post, I look for places to insert these summarizing lines to highlight a bigger idea. It’s like holding the reader’s hand to guide him through the thicket.

Kidder writes: “What we want are essences, woven into a story large and small.”

5. To Show and to Tell, by Phillip Lopate
Essays on writing by a champion of the personal essay

Favorite tip: The best personal writing is achieved by “diving into the wreck of personality with gusto.”

He offers two places to start:

With your quirks: “These are idiosyncrasies, stubborn tics, antisocial mannerisms, and so on that set you apart from the majority,” Lopate writes.

With remorse: “So it is that remorse is often the starting point for good personal writing, whose working out brings the necessary self-forgiveness (not to mention self- amusement) that is necessary to help us outgrow shame.”

Next week: Five books on art from Chris