My Favorite Writing Books

So, I am looking at my bookshelf and picking a few of my fave writing books. I'm rushed today so I'm just gonna spit a few out and move on. Writing the Breakout Novel by Don Maas. I have marked and underlined this entire book. Best book for revision I have ever seen. And Don is a cool guy. Name dropping, name dropping. How obnoxious.
Stephen King on Writing, amazingly insightful and funny. Worth it just for a glimpse inside that incredibly successful writerly head.
Annie Lamott's Bird by Bird. Wonderful, funny, inspiring and poignant.
Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus-- the one with the concept index-- that concept index is wonderful. You can jar your vocabulary by looking up a word then tracking it through the concept index. I'll pick a word. jitters- nervousness anxiety, fidgets,heebie-jeebies, jumps, nerves, shakes, shivers, tenseness, willies, see concepts 230, 410, 690 --concept 230 takes you through about three hundred words under State of Causation, 410 about a thousand words on mentality, 690 a few hundred under the concept concern. Cool stuff for a wordfreak.

Back to books:
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, great exercises to get a wannabe writer off her dead fanny. Anything by Elzabeth Lyon. She is a deep, deep analytical writer who puts the craft into archetypal, mythic, and psychological terms yet can be very nuts and bolts when the occasion calls for it.
There are a ton more, but I gotta go!