a book club for writers

5 books on craft and my writing goal for the new year

Hello friends! This is Ursula Fan Club, where I write on a weekly-ish basis about what I’m writing, reading, and seeing in the world. If you’re interested in speculative fiction, climate, ancestral stuff, textiles, living in a human body, and balancing a creative practice with whatever this is *waves wildly around*, you’ll probably like it here.

When I started Book Club for the Planet, the climate change book club that I have organized since 2020, it was largely an exercise in accountability. I wanted to write fiction about the climate crisis but as I attempted world building across half a dozen drafts and stories, I became stuck on the particulars. Will we still drink coffee in 2080? What cities will be under water by then? Will we be living in Antarctica?

In response, I began collecting non-fiction books about the climate to shore up my knowledge. These were what I call the “scary” books on my shelves that serve up some cold, hard truths—The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein, or Four Futures: Life After Capitalism by Peter Frase. (I read the first two; the latter two are still on my shelves.) But even though I was deeply interested in the topic, laying in bed with these books on a weeknight felt like forcing down cough medicine and I avoided reading them.

Book club was a gentle accountability tool to work through my stack, and quickly became more than that. We became a supportive reading community on a topic that is very challenging to read in isolation. Maybe it sounds cheesy to say, but it’s true. I’m so grateful for the dozens of readers who have shown up, either once or every time since the beginning, to share their perspectives and experience, listen to others with respect and curiosity, and challenge each others’ (and my own) thinking. Since then, I’ve read well over 50 books on the climate crisis and got a two-year graduate certificate in Sustainability from Harvard to boot. Accountability works, folks!

This is a long, roundabout way of getting to my writing goal of 2025, which is to write a rough draft manuscript of my novel. My primary accountability tool is PARAKEET, which starts the first week of January. But my secondary accountability tool? That’s where you come in.

Writing is a solitary activity but I have learned (and continue to be reminded) of how important community is to keep up momentum, work through hurdles, and receive feedback. And, like several years ago with my climate books, I have accumulated a growing pile of books on writing and craft that I leaf through but have never read cover to cover. This is the year we change that.

I have selected five unread books from my stack on writing and craft to serve as my guideposts throughout the year. One book for every two months, give or take. After reading each book, I will dedicate a Substack post to it. Of course, there are dozens, hundreds, of books about writing; these are just a few I’ve been aching to read. Have recommendations on what else I or others should check out? Please add a comment below!

To call it a “book club” feels generous, since I don’t currently plan to host live discussions of the books, but if you would like to read some or all of the books as an act of shared accountability, I would love that. Please join me!

February

Make Your Art No Matter What: Moving Beyond Creative Hurdles by Beth Pickens

Since I’m beginning Beth’s PARAKEET program in January, her book on cultivating a creative practice seems like warm, inviting place to begin. This book feels relevant for writers, visual artists, musicians, and any one who wants to spend more time making their art but feels stuck. I’ve read the first chapter on “time” and there are already so many ideas I want to try.

April

Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos

As a side project to my book, I’ve been chewing on writing about my family’s history of breast cancer and my own preventative double mastectomy. Febos, who teaches in the nonfiction writing program at the University of Iowa, strikes me as a powerful guide in the practice of writing about one’s self, body, and trauma.

June

Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison

Halfway into the year and hopefully fully warmed up and writing consistently, I have chosen a more nitty gritty book about story structure that veers away from a formulaic approach to writing. This is no Save the Cat, although I have that book, too. (I believe it’s just as important to know the “rule book” as not, if you’re going to break the “rules.”) Alison is the author of a memoir and four novels and is a professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia.

August

Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story by Ursula K. Le Guin

This wouldn’t be an Ursula K. Le Guin inspired writing Substack if I didn’t include a book by her! She originally published this book under the title, Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Mariner and the Mutinous Crew in 1998, including self-guided exercises and discussions on writing. A revised edition was published in 2015 with a changed subtitle, and republished again this year by Silver Press with a new introduction by Theo Downes-Le Guin, Karen Joy Fowler, Molly Gloss and Kelly Link. I have heard that this is a more technical book for more experienced writers, but I am eager to dig in regardless.

October

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Does this one need an introduction? This classic is the first book on writing I ever bought, and while I made it halfway through I never finished it. Towards the end of the year, when my momentum may be flagging and I need a kind, funny and gently pushy voice to power me through, I hope Lamott’s words will be a balm.

Thanks for reading and sticking with me all year, friends! As I’m coming up on my one-year Substack-iversary, I’m glad to be here and reading and writing alongside you.