100 craft books later

I've read over a hundred writing craft books. The "how to write good" books. The subtitle here is "and I still don't know wtf I'm doing." I'm not going to say, "So you don't have to." I'm going to say, "And you probably should too." Maybe not a hundred. That's a bit excessive. Craft books generally fall into two camps. There are hugely popular authors like Stephen King and Margaret Atwood. These books are often a memoir-style, "what I think about when I think about writing" vibe. These people are not educators, may not have had the formal MFA-type education. They are not giving super concrete advice, I imagine because they don't really know how they do what they do. They are more likely to say "read the classics" than discourse on show don't tell. Their agent and publisher begged them to write this book. Don't get me wrong, I love this. These types of books are inspiring and important. The other type of book is from people who have studied craft and ground out a formula. We may not…