It’s the most paradoxical idea of all. Somehow, it’s both the most tempting and the most potentially disastrous. Because if we’re supposed to “write what you love” and “write what you fear,” all of us have those same passions and apprehensions about the same thing: writing! So what could be more relatably irresistible than a book about a writer?
Yes! You decide. You will have a main character who is a writer! And then the reality hits. What does a writer actually do? They sit at their desk or somewhere and type. They — sit. Writers are not in car chases or monstrous relatives hidden in their attic or serial killers stalking their homes. Their only narrow escapes are from split infinitives and clichés.
If fact, writing a book about a writer is basically jettisoning every opportunity for setting, and, instead, trying to write about a stationary sedentary seated person who lives in their head. With the only potential drama that someone knocks their coffee into their keyboard.
And yet, and yet, what could be more fascinating than writing about a writer? One who pursues universal truths, who has experiences, who is talented and persuasive and thoughtful, and determined. (And talk about suspense, someone who, in a wild act of perilous bravery, lives or dies at the whim of agents, editors, publishers — and the all-powerful reader.)
In All This Could Be Yours, I went way meta and super-personal and took readers with me — well, with the main character — on a book tour gone terrifying. And trust me, if you have been an author on book tour, or if you have been in the audience at a book event, All This Could Be Yours will reveal not only the joys, but the dark side of being a writer. After all, what we write is our own truth. And sometimes, that can be dangerous.
Books about writers can be tantalizingly entertaining. And these are just a few of the ones that take a potential dud of a topic and turn it into riveting reading.
All of the Finlay Donovan books. Elle Cosimano is such a genius. In her first, Finlay Donovan is Killing It is a perfect illustration of how writing about a writer can be brilliant. A novelist is frantic for a new idea, and she and her agent are in Panera, contemplating a story about a contract killer. Someone overhears their conversation, decides it’s real life, and insists Finlay kill her husband. Or else. And a plot becomes real life. Hilarious and irresistible. Cannot wait for her new Finlay Donovan Crosses the Line.
How about using murder mystery authors as murder suspects? In her upcoming Writers and Liars (July 2025), the brilliant Carol Goodman encompasses some of the beloved mystery elements: a dead billionaire, a remote Greek island in a beautiful mansion. In Goodman’s clever hands, all of this becomes gorgeously and ingeniously new again. Goodman is our own Agatha Christie, and this book is a real treat.
Talk about taking a risk! In A Very Bad Thing, and I promise this is not a spoiler, the talented J.T. Ellison kills off the author main character on, essentially, page one. What emerges is a fast-paced thriller about life and art and where authors get their ideas. And a haunting examination of how far someone will go to get what they want — and how to use the pages of a novel to get it.
Anthony Horowitz sits on the Mount Olympus of authors who write about writing. His Susan Ryeland series, beginning with Magpie Murders and through the new Marble Hall Murders, stars a book editor, a fictional author who writes a mystery series, another fictional author who takes over the fictional series, and the fictional main character of the series who somehow comes to life. It sounds complicated, but trust me, it’s absolutely genius, and nothing but fabulous. And in his Horowitz and Hawthorne series, Horowitz makes himself a main character. Unfiltered, audacious, and absolutely irresistible.
The High Season, by Kelly Simmons — When a group of competitive all-female writers gather for a luxurious writing retreat in a stunning house on the cliffs along Carmel-by-the-Sea, their peace is shattered by a tragic accident on a notoriously steep oceanside curve. Who lives, who dies, who gets to write the story? When two women enter into a co-writing arrangement, a grapple for control of material has deadly consequences.
Sulari Gentill’s The Woman in the Library is mind-blowing — I’m not quite sure I can do it justice, but it appears, (and that’s all I’ll say), to be about an author using a combination of her real life and suggestions from a fan to write her newest book. But you’ll have to figure this out for yourself. And you will cheer along the way. And her newest, The Writer, is supposedly about “an aspiring writer who meets and falls in love with her literary idol — only to find him murdered the day after she gave him her manuscript to read.” But again, that’s not what it’s about at all.
So hilarious! The main character in Pick Me by Victoria Schade is a cowboy romance ghostwriter. I mean — isn’t the concept alone completely applause-worthy? Brooke’s profession presents a wonderful writerly problem: How can you craft happily ever afters when your heart’s been broken? She no longer believes in love, but her deadlines (and editors) don’t care. Only when she recognizes the beats of her life as potential plot points do fiction and fact come together. Writers will see themselves — and their dilemmas — in this one.
Marie Benedict’s The Queens of Crime stars not just one writer, but five! And not only that, they are also famous golden age mystery authors turned fictional. In this absolute tour de force, and perfect example of a golden age mystery, Marie Benedict takes real-life Sayers, Christie, Allingham, Marsh and Orczy; makes them semi-fictional, and then has them solve a crime together. I loved this so much!
And no, I didn’t — couldn’t! — forget Stephen King’s Misery, which I read before I was an author and now I cannot bear to think about. Or Jean Hanff Korelitz’s haunting and ironic The Plot and David Bell’s terrific and believable Kill Your Darlings and R.F. Kuang’s sinister and snarky Yellowface — all of which are totally different, but each is a writer who takes someone else’s manuscript. And hey, look what’s currently on The Times’ list? Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Life. About two writers!
So, it can work. Writing about what you know and what you fear may be the perfect solution to your next plot. And it’s obviously what readers love.
