A Little Help from our CanLit Friends for NaNoWriMo

Since 1999 National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it is more affectionately known, has been giving people an excuse to stop putting off writing that novel they’ve had kicking around in the back of their head for ages. Worldwide, every November becomes a time to celebrate quantity rather than quality and just sit down to write 50,000 words in 30 days; to stop saying "one day" and just do it already.

All some of us need is actually having a goal set for our writing while others might still want a little advice on how to go about the writing process. It just so happens that the publishers of the LPG have some great books by Canadian authors discussing their writing process and the writing life.

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How I Wrote Certain of My Books by George Bowering (Mansfield Press)

An exciting and sometimes scandalous memoir of sorts by the very prolific George Bowering, How I Wrote Certain of My Books takes the reader through the process and circumstances behind some of the author’s most famous works, both of poetry and fiction.

Voluptuous Pleasure: The Truth About the Writing Life by Marianne Apostolides (BookThug)

A collection of essays, Voluptuous Pleasure takes the reader along for the ride as Apostolides investigates truth, memory, and writing it all down.

"In vivid language, Voluptuous Pleasure examines tensions between the exploration of personal memories and the construction of engaging narratives." 
– Quill & Quire

Writing Poetry to Save Your Life: How to Find the Courage to Tell Your Stories by Maria Mazziotti Gillan (Guernica Editions)

A book about the writing process rather than the craft of writing, Writing Poetry to Save Your Life is not just for aspiring poets. Instead it is the bit of encouragement a person needs to delve deep and explore their memories to find the story, whatever form that takes, that a person has inside them. An engaging read that will jumpstart your own creativity and give you confidence in your words.

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And if you’re looking for some help on the more technical side of things, check out these books:

Are you a policer of the English language? Grammar Matters: The Social Significance of How We Use Language by Jila Ghomeshi (ARP Books) could give you some insight into how precise you want to be with the rules of grammar and speech.

Do you love words and want to fill your book with strange or obscure words? Howard Richler is a longtime logophile and has several books from Ronsdale Press, including How Happy Became Homosexual: And Other Mysterious Semantic Shifts and Can I Have a Word With You?, that discuss the complex and every-changing meanings of words within the English language.

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Good luck to everyone participating!

_______Edited from the original post, published on the LPG blog