Resources Part 1: Books

I found this list of Top Ten Books to Get Your Freelance Writer for Christmas online this morning. I've actually read two of the books on the list already. I downloaded The Well Fed Writer shortly before I began this whole freelance writing adventure, and it gave me hope that I could actually succeed at this endeavor. Several years ago I read another of the books on the list and it remains up there in my top five favorite books of all time, the rest of which are fiction. The book is On Writing by Stephen King. It affected me so profoundly that when I finished reading it I immediately started rereading it. I was also prompted to write a celebrity letter, which is something I have only done one other time in my life, the first being the letter I wrote to Alice Cooper to tell him how disgusting I thought he was when I was nine and a half. If you haven't read it, you should, but don't expect it to be like anything else you've ever read from Stephen King.

The list started me thinking about how important it is in freelance writing to make use of the resources available to you. One of these resources is books. Whether they're the hard copy variety or downloads, they can give you a lot of useful information. It always helps to learn from someone whose been in the same situation. If you can avoid making the same mistakes they've made or capitalize on things they found to be successful, you have a head start. I know I haven't tapped into enough of the information that's out there, but I intend to add a few of these books to my Christmas list and commit to reading more freelance writing resources in the future.