I have read my fair share of writing books during my life, and I have two main reflections regarding that kind of literature.

The first thing I have found out is that books about writing are quite meaningless. There are two things you need to know to write well, and neither of them are learned by reading writing books.

The first thing you need to learn to write well, is how good writing looks like. To try to learn that by reading writing books is equivalent with learning how delicious food tastes, by reading recipe books. The only way to learn how good writing looks like, is to read good and bad books and register the difference between them.

The other thing you need to learn to write well, is to write. And you learn to write, by writing. To try learning how to write by reading writing books is like trying to learn to ride a bike, by reading a bicycle riding book. Not a good idea.

The other thing I have learned from reading writing books is that they influence your writing.

I learned my lesson when I read Stephen King’s On Writing, which I must say is one of the better books within the genre. The lesson I learned was that: If you use the same methods as another writer, then your writing will look like his. I used the exactly same methods as King described in his book. My text sounded exactly like King himself.

Now, creating literature like Stephen King might not be the worst thing possible, but being a copycat is still nothing I would like to do. Therefore I abandonded the idea promptly.

Every author has their own set of rules on how good work should look like, and which methods they should use to get there. If you copy someone else’s methods, your writing will look like that person’s too. So, you should only use someone else’s methods, if you are willing to write texts which sound like his.

One more thing. If the person who has written the writing book, is not an otherwise acclaimed author, then your writing will be influenced by that as well. You will then unconsciously write prose which is more shit than hit.

So, don’t read writing books. The best thing you can do instead is to read and write, read and write, and then write some more.