Historians! I'm starting a collection of books on the art of writing history for a grad seminar. The goal of our seminar is to mentor PhD students writing for publication for the first time.

What are your favorite titles for writing inspo/methods/archives? I'll thread some here.
1. Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird is probably my favorite book on the writing process, in general. The advice is sound; the chapters concise; and her focus on writing as a process where even "failure" is productive is a great reframing device. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/97395/bird-by-bird-by-anne-lamott/
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott: 9780385480017 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

For a quarter century, more than a million readers—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice....

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/97395/bird-by-bird-by-anne-lamott/
2. Michel-Rolph Trouillot's Silencing the Past is the clear choice for thinking about the stakes of narrative, and for thinking about the disciplinary power of silence and its impact on the field. (I believe our 1st years read it, though). https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246609/silencing-the-past-20th-anniversary-edition-by-michel-rolph-trouillot/
Silencing the Past (20th anniversary edition) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot: 9780807080535 | PenguinR...

Foreword by Hazel V. Carby   A modern classic about power and the making of history, with a new foreword by a prominent scholar   Placing the West’s failure to acknowledge...

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246609/silencing-the-past-20th-anniversary-edition-by-michel-rolph-trouillot/
3. Natalie Zemon Davis's Fiction in the Archives is what I read in my methods of historical writing course. I love how it clarifies archival records as the product of performance, and gets students talking about against-the-grain reading. https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=2078
Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France | Natalie Zemon...

To receive a royal pardon in sixteenth-century France for certain kinds of homicide—unpremeditated, unintended, in self-defense, or otherwise excusable—a supplicant had to tell the king a story....

https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=2078
4. This is one I will definitely consult as I plan the year: Wendy Laura Belcher's Writing Your Journal in Twelve Weeks. Loads of practical advice, especially about how to target your writing to specific journals, audiences, and nail the generic forms. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo26985005.html
Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks, Second Edition

“Wow. No one ever told me this!” Wendy Laura Belcher has heard this countless times throughout her years of teaching and advising academics on how to write journal articles. Scholars know they must...

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo26985005.html
5. and 6. Here. Great suggestions! https://twitter.com/kangborderlaw/status/1275579080151191555
More great ideas (and some new material for me to read, thanks @meznaqato). 7. and 8. https://twitter.com/meznaqato/status/1275580267537858561
Numbers 9-n here! Thank you @richheffron! https://twitter.com/richheffron/status/1275579208736092162
Even more! Grateful for these as many of them are new to me! https://twitter.com/richheffron/status/1275580198935805953
Checking out Draft No. 4 now in PDF, thank you @brdemuth

(see: https://jsomers.net/mcphee-draft-no-4.pdf) https://twitter.com/brdemuth/status/1275581875852062724
omgosh y'all, I'm struggling to keep up with all your suggestions. THANK YOU and KEEP 'EM COMING!

I will have to aggregate these in some way; I'm learning so much and I think my grad students will also love this entire list!
Henry Reynolds, Why Weren't We Told (thanks
@Priaad!): https://www.penguin.com.au/books/why-werent-we-told-9780140278422 https://twitter.com/Priaad/status/1275583481180028929
"Notes on a Desegregated Method" by @ndbconnolly! https://twitter.com/masonbwilliams/status/1275585212165042178
YES! Homefield advantage here; my students absolutely must read Omnia El Shakry's “History without documents” in the AHR. Good call, @popeyed !

https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/120/3/920/19862 https://twitter.com/popeyed/status/1275594652784095233
Great practical advice for writing here, and for approaches to teaching writing, too! https://twitter.com/m_r_glass/status/1275595316146900994
Another new-to-me collection. Thank you! Will check this book out: https://twitter.com/DavidRArmitage/status/1275595450448523268
This looks like a good practical field guide! https://twitter.com/WABirdthistle/status/1275596200973078528
btw, reading y'all's recommendations has prompted me to mention one of my fav writing handbooks. It's a brief how-to on making persuasive arguments:

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say / I Say: the Moves that Matter in Academic Writing.

https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393631678
On Sara Maza's Thinking about History:

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo17212779.html https://twitter.com/A_NeedhamNYU/status/1275598747196690432
Dispatches from Dystopia looks *really* cool. Thank you for the rec, @steven_seegel! https://twitter.com/steven_seegel/status/1275599225095479296
YES! Maybe the most important conversation anyone working with students should have... always remember both a) that historiographic conversations were happening in the room long before we walked in, and b) solo-authored work is a fiction. Thx! https://twitter.com/A_NeedhamNYU/status/1275599250521559041
A classic for a reason! Must be consulted, Thank you @GregBrownUNLV! https://twitter.com/GregBrownUNLV/status/1275600183024214016
Oh another new-to-me book on writing! Thank you @amocantare, I'll check this one out! https://twitter.com/amocantare/status/1275601364790411273
Along the same lines of Zerubavel, here's a solid recommend on Eco's How to Write a Thesis: https://twitter.com/DavidRArmitage/status/1275601616436150278
And kicking academic jargon and sneaky passive voice in the gut is always a great move. This book captures the spirit of that. :) https://twitter.com/DavidRArmitage/status/1275601491357769730
I'm going to return to the mentions tomorrow and share more of your wonderful recommendations in this thread. Thank you all, and please keep them coming! I am filling out quite a library queue at this point. brb~ 📚📚📖🤓📚📚
Continuing to build this thread, with Tom Griffiths, The Art of Time Travel (thanks @sandroantonello!)

https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/art-time-travel-0 https://twitter.com/sandroantonello/status/1275601999661162497
Check out Joan Flores Villalobos’s essay “Freak Letters” at the link @Greeneland provides here! https://twitter.com/Greeneland/status/1275602826182504448
Checking out Martínez now! Thanks @SMAGualtieri !

https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=7860 https://twitter.com/SMAGualtieri/status/1275626246362198016
Dead Certainties is another new-to-me book, but it looks amazing and precisely the thing to get grad students questioning the relationship between evidence and the author's role. Thank @ejzim!

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/161623/dead-certainties-by-simon-schama/ https://twitter.com/EJZski/status/1275630353797898240
Picking up Farge's book now. Lots of good recommendations here!

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300198935/allure-archives https://twitter.com/MarieStango/status/1275634417621336065
Lots to recommend here, thank you! For now, I'll link the two New Yorker articles:

Trouble in the Archives 1: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1983/12/05/i-trouble-in-the-archives

Trouble in the Archives 2: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1983/12/12/ii-trouble-in-the-archives https://twitter.com/SuhaBabikir/status/1275641785990160387
Great resources here, thanks! Re: the Ginzburg pieces, here's a PDF chapter of "Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm".

https://mcgillivrayg.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/clues-roots-of-an-evidential-paradigm.pdf https://twitter.com/daraghjgrant/status/1275657605189447680
Checking out Remembered Raptures now, thank you @Pankhuri_A! https://twitter.com/Pankhuri_A/status/1275810821948481537
A new-to-me style book! Thank you @mkazin ! https://twitter.com/mkazin/status/1275816001070862341
On revision (probably the most important--and least talked about--part of the process): https://twitter.com/kangborderlaw/status/1275816093836140549
https://twitter.com/jwassers/status/1275903206858452994
Crucial professionalization resources linked here, courtesy of @kangborderlaw! Anyone working with grad students should be having candid convos about plagiarism, credit/collaboration norms, and how to protect their work. https://twitter.com/kangborderlaw/status/1276241523256909824
You can follow @SDFahrenthold.
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