I’m on a deadline. One of the most important deadlines I’ve ever had. In May I have to deliver my first book. The book is about creative demons and how to slay them. And the devilish irony is that in writing a book about self-doubt, procrastination, disappointment and constraints, I’ve experienced self-doubt, procrastination, disappointment and a barrage of constraints.

The upside to the agony of wringing a chapter a week out of a locked-down mind is that in my research I’ve discovered some wonderful books. Two of these books happen to be about writing. So today, in an exercise which is, if I’m being honest, procrastination by another name, I thought I’d write about them. And should you happen to find yourself in a position like mine, where the words you’re looking for aren’t coming easily, then you may well find solace and inspiration among their pages.

The first is by the Booker Prize winning author George Saunders. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, (In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading and Life), published by Bloomsbury, presents you with seven classic Russian short stories by Gogol, Chekov, Turgenev and Tolstoy.

After each story Saunders, like a literary anatomist, dismembers the text, line by line, narrative trick by narrative trick, to extrapolate principles applicable not just to writing but creativity in general. And if this all sounds a bit … heavyweight, it’s really not. Saunders’ wisdom, borne of a lifetime spent reading, is effortlessly shared, as the endorsements on the beautifully designed cover from Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith and Khaled Hosseini attest.

In one of my favourite passages, he deploys an insightful – and reassuring – Lego metaphor to explain how great work often comes into being brick by brick, moment by moment, word by word, with the creator following their nose, rather than having some grand architectural plan.

Here Saunders writes about getting started …

‘Who cares if the first draft is good? It doesn't need to be good, it just needs to be, so you can revise it. You don't need an idea to start story. You just need a sentence. Where does that sentence come from? Wherever. It doesn't have to be anything special. It will become something special, over time, as you keep reacting to it. Reacting to that sentence, then changing it, hoping to divest it of some of its ordinariness or sloth, is… writing. That's all writing is or needs to be.’

Words I keep close to my heart as I stumble towards the end of my own first draft.

I recently read an interview with Orson Welles where he explained how he believed that it is in the editing room, not on set, where a movie director is able to exercise their true artistry. There is too much on a shoot – light, the limitations of actors, demands of locations etc – outside their control. But in the cut the director is absolutely in charge. It is there that they can make their vision distinctive. Saunders feels a similar way about the value of editing when it comes to finding your own authorial voice …

‘Let's say there are two phases in writing (although these tend to move in and out of reach of each other): composition and revision. We tend to associate voice with the first ("I just burst out my first draft in my true voice, singing out my spontaneous vision!"). But, in my experience, voice really gets made during the second phase – as we edit and, especially, as we cut. Most of us tend, in the first draft, to sing for too long, in ways that actually sound pretty similar to all of those other writers singing.’

My knowledge of Russian literature was pretty scant before I picked up the book. Some Solzhenitsyn, a little Turgenev. Now, I’m hungry for more.

Light the Dark, Writers on Creativity, Inspiration and the Artistic Process, edited by Joe Fassler and published by Penguin, has a simple premise: forty-six of the most acclaimed and exciting contemporary authors – Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Mary Gaitskill, David Mitchell, Amy Tan, among others – answer a simple but profound question: what inspires you?

This collection of short essays was born out of a series for The Atlantic magazine. Fassler asks each author to ‘choose a favourite passage from literature, the lines that have hit them hardest over the course of a lifetime’s reading … at the core of each of these pieces is a moment of transformative reading – an encounter with a short, artful sequence of words that hits with life-altering force.’

The writing is, as you might expect, exquisite; but the real value of the book lies in the gems of wisdom contained within. It’s fascinating to see common truths emerge from the very particular experiences of each individual author.

One of the themes I noticed (applicable to all creative pursuits, and one I’ve considered before) is the loss of ego at the moment of creation.

Kathryn Harrison describes it like this …

‘When I'm writing the way I want, the way I love, which is without thinking about what I'm writing, a strange thing happens: I feel simultaneously the most myself I could possibly be, and at the same time totally relieved of self.’

Andre Dubus III puts it a little more bluntly …

‘Characters will come alive if you back the fuck off … If you allow them to do what they're going to do, think and feel what they're going to think and feel, things start to happen on their own. It's a beautiful and exciting alchemy.’

In one of my favourite essays, Karl Ove Knausgaard explains how he achieved this state of mind during the writing of My Struggle …

‘Every morning now, I write one page. I get up early and write one page in two hours. I start with a word. It could be "apple" or “son” or “tooth," anything – it doesn't matter. It's just a starting point – a word, an association – and the restriction is that I write about that. It can't be about anything else. Then I just start, without knowing what it's going to be about. And it's like the text produces itself.
I'm not talking about quality. For God’s sake, no. It's not like this text ever looks good or anything. It's just sitting there writing. Not thinking, and writing. I think it's a state of mind, one I usually compare with music. When you watch musicians, they're not thinking about what they're doing, they're just playing. Well, the same thing can be with writing. It's just writing.’

Writing.

Just writing.

Which reminds me, there’s something else I really should be getting on with …

If you’re in the UK and thinking of buying either A Swim in a Pond in the Rain or Light the Dark, why not do so from Bookshop.org which supports local, independent bookshops.

Two Essential Books on the Art of Writing