Best books on Writing and Creativity for 2013 - 1. Why we Write : 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do - Edited by Meredith Maran Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do Prolific novelist Isabel Allende, one of the prolific novelists, who is one of the writers of the above book, offers three pieces of advice to the aspiring writers - It’s worth the work to find the precise word that will create a feeling or describe a situation. Use a thesaurus, use your imagination, scratch your head until it comes to you, but find the right word. When you feel the story is beginning to pick up rhythm—the characters are shaping up, you can see them, you can hear their voices, and they do things that you haven’t planned, things you couldn’t have imagined—then you know the book is somewhere, and you just have to find it, and bring it, word by word, into this world. When you tell a story in the kitchen to a friend, it’s full of mistakes...