Which how-to books have actually helped you?

Not a one. I read a few part way through before throwing them out.

There is one book I reccommend but it's not a how to book. "Plain English for Lawyers"
It's more about Concission than much else but consiccion is easlily the average writer's greatest weakness.

Other books I have used extensively:
the OED, Fowler's Modern English Dictionary, Rogets, H. W. Fowler's Modern English Usage 2nd edition, Oxford Press 1985, The Random House Handbook 2nd edition 1997, by Fredrick Crews ( it's a Grammar) .

Story, by Robert McKee. However, I found writing, writing and more writing to be the biggest help. Eventually, you have to just get a feel for how stories work. I don't hink how to books can help with that, but I don't think they hurt to read.

I've read a bunch, like you, but three have truly been helpful: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card, and Starting from Scratch by Rita Mae Brown. They all had good advice, IMO, on lifestyle choices and nitty gritty of spending time in front of the computer, how bad it is for your body and how you have to compensate for it, etc. Practical advice like that.

I also have 20 Master Plots, but that's more a reference book than anything else. A snoozer unless you're actually looking for something to help you with plotting. I did glean one bit of memorable advice from it though. Every time you add a characters you increase the human relations factor (and difficulty) exponentially.

I have The Synonym Finder by J.I. Rodale that has been a godsend in many, many ways. I think I can even say it's more helpful than trying to use sites like yourdictionary.com and my Mac's Sherlock program.

On Writing, by Stephen King. Yes, it's basic, but that's what we forget over time; how to get out of our own way and tell a story.

Writing the Breakout Novel, by Donald Maass. I've sold six novels, and this book taught me plenty when I read it only last year.

I have a few more to add that I forgot about because I lean on them so much I don't think of them anymore (if that makes sense).
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, and The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Han (yep - it helped my writing).
Also just finished a book called The Tao of Writing that I found had some good nuggets. And although I've subscribed to Writer's Digest and Writer off and on and to Locus once (it was spendy for that year, but fun to get), I think one of the more helpful things I did for my writing was get more creative in other areas. I got Artist Magazine for a year and painted more. Got really creative in all sorts of areas in my life, because in learning in those areas, I was able to bring it back to my writing. But the magazine was good. The lessons in there on painting are transferrable to a writer - and since you are reading of painting and thinking of writing, it becomes a very imaginary exercise.

Anyway, I liked it.

The BEST:

www.trivia-library.com/b/self...ion.htm

I have a couple no one has mentioned yet-

Plot & Structure by Jame Scott Bell: this one helped me immensely in my crack at my first novel ever which was during last year's NaNoWriMo. I crossed the finish line with a 57k word count and a not completely awfull story. ;-)

Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain: I simply love ths book for it's style of writing and for it's bare bones information. More than anything else it helped me to overcome my fear of even trying to write fiction.

I can't really recommend any one book, and I've read a million of them. But for story structure, there's nothing better than John Truby's classes, which are available on CD and DVD at truby.com

I've been a pro writer - screenwriter and now novelist - for over ten years and there's no better story teacher out there, for my money.

Alex

There are some great suggestions here folks, thanks. I'm finding that the books do help, but actually just writing and feedback is even more helpful still. Some of the folks on the tribe have really guided me in great directions as well. I think my work is improving gradually, but even more important than that the last two years of writing has been a fun rather than frustrating experience.

"If You Can Talk, You Can Write" - Joel Salzman - You'll never have writer's block again... hardly!

Art & Fear - it's about coming to peace with yourself so you can do your work:

Excerpt: "This is a book about making art. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozart-like people; essentially-statistically speaking-there aren't any people like that. Geniuses get made once-a-century or so, yet good art gets made all the time, so to equate the making of art with the workings of genius removes this intimately human activity to a strangely unreachable and unknowable place. For all practical purposes making art can be examined in great detail without ever getting entangled in the very remote problems of genius."

and the immensely practical Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway.

without going into explanations or excerpts, here's my list so far:

Raymond Carver "Fires" (ok, I'll explain: the essays section)
Henry Miller "On Writing"
Aristotle "Poetics"
Edgar Allen Poe "Theory of Composition"
Henry James "The Art of Fiction" and the "New York Prefaces"
Ernest Hemingway "A Moveable Feast"

various -- Paris Review interviews

I'll toss in another vote for Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, add a second to Ernest Hemingway's Movable Feast, then throw in the following:

The Artist's Way -- Julia Cameron
The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers -- Betsy Lerner
The Pocket Muse -- Monica Wood
Tao Te Ching -- Lao Tsu

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, 6th Edition (NOT 7th)
by Janet Burroway

Excellent. I've read it twice; will read it again.

"The Elements of Style" should be a required text for any type of writer. We had to get that for my writing classes in high school and college.

I've bought some writing books, of course, but I'm trying to limit how many I get, so I'm not inundated by all the advice and suggestions!

I was fortunate to find "The Marshall Plan" book and workbook, by Evan Marshall. It's a wonderful guideline for planning one's novel, and when I'm finally done filling in the workbook, I'll be ready to put it all together and (hopefully) be professionally published.

One reason I'm very excited about this plan/workbook is that before I even bought it, I'd already been doing some things he recommends! My story arc is already planned out, I know where it's going, etc., etc., and to see that validated by a professional writer and editor is very encouraging.

Now, the final test of actually helping me is to get it published! Or I should say "them" because it's hopefully going to be at least a two-book series.

Other helpful resources have been websites of favorite authors, like Orson Scott Card, who discusses the all-important first 13 lines of one's novel. I've got the first 5 done at least, whoohoo!

Hands down, the best book to assist in the craft of writing is Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, which teaches that quantity over quality is the best way to begin.

It is a sure way of leaving writer's block in the distant past and it teaches you that you have it within you to craft beautiful words, but we often spend too much time worrying about the initial draft.

As a perfect example of a way to get you going, she said that the first thing we do when we wake is to write, without stopping or criticising, 3-4 single lined pages of whatever comes to mind. From this adventure in often inanity, you are combed out of the riff raff, and ready for quick spurts of response to ideas that come to you. Inevitably too, those inane pages reveal important points along the way to what was bothering you, what caught your eye, and from many of these moments holding my bladder as I wrote on an elbow, I've crafted some of my best work.

Then of course, there are the philosophy books, like Heidegger's Being and Time, Jean-Paul Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason and other texts that were like walking in a snow storm of words, but in the end, I feel a tightened vehicle of thought that picks up errors quickly and provides a mindset that looks at other books with a simple glare.

In general, you start with the most difficult pieces and you stay with them until you unlock all their secrets. It's about never leaving a stone unturned and thus our own writing cruises by with a sophisticated first layer. And from that first layer, we separate the text where clarification is needed and exponding is desired.

Writing is a puzzle, a big landscape of pieces that our quests for quality constipate. Often a good story has taken years to craft in the mental confines of experience and honed skills and so the book The Artist's Way prepares you for the ideas that come and like a soldier you harness the ideas with eloquence because you have been running and fighting with yourself not to fear opportunity.

The Screenwriter's Bible, by David Trotter is the only book on writing screenplays that's worth reading. It's helpful, and ego and bullshit free, a rarity in the world of screenwriting books.