Old NID
79610
Literary genius — or at least competence — never blossoms in a vacuum. As much as many creative types like to pose as a mysterious lone wolves skulking through the fringes of society without ever becoming a cog in the machine, man, even their works have been shaped by their external experiences up to that point. Fred Lapides notes that soaking up advice through any reads available opens up new worlds and ideas and can help mold a work from just OK to just plain awesome.
Some are obvious, like Strunk&White's "The Elements of Style". Some less so, like "New Feminist Criticism" by Elaine Showalter, but it's all good, so here is the whole list.
