BY KATHI KAMEN GOLDMARK AND SAM BARRY

The Author Enablers are here to answer your questions about writing and publishing. Together, Kathi and Sam have more than 25 years of experience in book publishing. Kathi is an author, radio producer and former publicist; Sam is a marketing manager at a major publishing company and a freelance editor. They are also proud members of the Rock Bottom Remainders, the all-author rock band founded by Kathi in 1992.

Making a list, checking it twice

Dear BookPage Readers,

The holiday season is looming, which means it's time to plan your annual trip to Uzbekistan to escape being driven mad by "The Little Drummer Boy" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Before you leave, you'll need to send gifts to your loved ones, and the Author Enablers are here to help. We asked nine well-known authors to tell us about books that have helped and inspired them. Their recommendations would make perfect gifts for the writer in your life, even if that writer is you.

The craft of writing
Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith): "I love Lynn Freed's book on writing, Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home: Life on the Page. It is brilliant, tough, funny, and incredibly honest, just like Lynn. She has such a marvelous and dry and sort of nasty sense of humor, and can really make me laugh; but the book is full of wisdom, too."
Norman Mailer (author of The Castle in the Forest, January 2007): "I confess to being high on The Spooky Art."
Norris Church Mailer (Cheap Diamonds, August 2007), in a random incidence of great minds thinking alike, also recommends her husband's book: "My favorite book on writing is The Spooky Art by Norman Mailer."
Donna Wares (editor, My California: Journeys by Great Writers and the brains behind www.californiaauthors.com): "Carolyn See's Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers is inspirational and quirky and a fun read. Carolyn's mantra: 'A thousand words a day, five days a week, for the rest of your life.' I also like How to Write a Book Proposal by Michael Larsen. His slim volume is a terrific roadmap for crafting a smart proposal."

Annie Dillard Fan Club
Christine Wicker (Not in Kansas Anymore): "The Writing Life by Annie Dillard —beautifully written and minutely observed essays about keeping faith and hope during the torturous process of writing. Two bits of wisdom I think of almost every writing day came from this book. One comes from Dillard's observation of chopping wood. She says that to chop a piece of wood you have to aim through the wood to the chopping block. It's the same with writing. If you aim at the words themselves, they'll have little resonance. You have to strike more forcefully at the meaning underneath so that the words come tumbling after, flying away in all directions like wood struck with a well aimed ax. The other piece of advice I rejected as absurd and then couldn't stop pondering—like a lot of the best wisdom. She says that you shouldn't write about what interests you most but about what interests only you. That one is difficult, but following it yields all sorts of riches."
Elizabeth Benedict (The Practice of Deceit, Almost): "The Writing Life is a somber, eloquent meditation on writing that speaks to the difficulties, obsessiveness, and deep pleasures of the process. It also has the most useful epigraph, from Goethe, for anyone who does serious work of any kind: 'Do not hurry; do not rest.' (Author Kim Addonizio recommended Elizabeth's own The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers in last year's holiday column.)

Reading for inspiration
Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi (The Last Song of Dusk): "Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient shimmers with novelistic brilliance: Every page is a lesson in the craft of writing and enchantment. It offers innumerable lessons on plotting, the construction of sentences, the blending of poetry and prose, and it sings with a deep and glistening sorrow."
Jonathan Kirsch (A History of the End of the World): "The Slave by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Any book by IBS will teach important lessons to a writer about both the craft of writing and the way a writer needs to use his or her head, heart and eye. Singer's collected stories (newly reissued by the Library of America) offer a wealth of inspiration and instruction. But The Slave remains my favorite."
Lynn Freed (Reading, Writing & Leaving Home: Life on the Page) finds that reading the letters and diaries of great writers can be, if not always inspiring, of some comfort. For instance, Franz Kafka's diaries contain the following entry: "January 19, 1914: Great antipathy to Metamorphosis. Unreadable ending. Imperfect almost to the foundation. It would have turned out much better if I had not been interrupted at the time by the business trip." (The Diaries of Franz Kafka: 1914-1923, Schocken Books.)

E-mail your questions about writing and publishing to AuthorEnabler@aol.com.