How Do I Learn To Write?

By Terry McGarry

Sentence-by- sentence writing improvement:

Line by Line:

How to Edit Your Own Writing, Claire Kehrwald Cook,Houghton Mifflin
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, William Fowler, Oxford Univ. Press
The Careful Writer, Theodore M. Bernstein, Atheneum
The Practical Stylist, Sheridan Baker, Harper & Row
The Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed, Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Times Books (also The Well-Tempered Sentence by her)
The Elements of Style, Strunk & White

Writing better fiction:
Beginnings, Middles, and Ends, Nancy Kress, Writer's Digest Books
Creating Short Fiction, Damon Knight, St. Martin's
On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner, Harper & Row
The Art of Creative Writing, Lajos Egri (may be OOP)
Techniques of the Selling Writer, Dwight V. Swain
How to Write a Damn Good Novel II,James N. Frey. St. Martins 1994, ISBN 0-312-10478- 2
Characters and Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card

Writing better speculative fiction:
The Craft of Science Fiction, Reginald Bretnor
Those Who Can, Ed. Robin Scott Wilson (recently reprinted)
Paragons, Ed. Robin Scott Wilson
Creating the Heavens, Melissa Scott, Heinemann
Style manuals (cover grammar, punctuation, usage, treatment of names and terms, editing stages, book production):
The Chicago Manual of Style, University of Chicago
Words into Type, Prentice Hall
A Manual of Style (U.S. Govt Printing Office), Gramercy
The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage