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Best Books on How to Write a Book-Read As I Wrote My 1st

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My Best Books on How to Write a Book: I Read These While Writing My 1st Travel Memoir

Not all the best books on how to write a book carry this tagline. So many titles, such as Bird by Bird or On Writing, fall directly into the list of best books about writing books. The other books for writers that I have dared to add here are those that have nurtured my growth as a human and a writer for over eight years. These titles aren’t promoted as the best books for writing, but by being so amazing and wholesome, they have slowly guided me along while I wrote my first book, one page, one day, and one breath at a time.

I had written about writers often drinking from the common wellspring of the greatest writing ever written in my favorite books from 2022. I have drunk the books listed here. While reading them, the book had become me, I was her, and everything else ceased to exist.

That afternoon when I learnt to bike and couldn’t believe what I was doing, or when I saw the Himalayas for the first time and was stunned by the pure mountains (more details in my book), and life had grown exponentially larger from what it had been in moments, these books have enlarged my life, too.

A lot of books have changed my life. The Little Prince and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance also belong to the same category. I am not including them here. This list of the best books on writing books is limited to those that directly helped me write better, especially travel and nonfiction, my travel memoir to be precise, made me see how to edit a nonfiction book, inspired me to write and keep pursuing art no matter the outcome, allowed me to feel what I was feeling as a lone writer at work might, and some are science books that enhanced my understanding of the human organism. To write about our species, we should understand the physics of our species.

Not a list is perfect, and not a list is suited to everyone. But this is mine. These titles run with my blood. They sit in my stomach. They shape each word my fingers type and my pen inks.

Enjoy my best books for creative writers. I hope that some of these storm you and cradle you as they have me.

Good luck!

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My Best Travel Books of All Time

a woman sitting holding best book about travel to read in her hands in clay color dress the book title shows journeys beyond and within it is a green cover and in the background you can see plants

Honestly, this piece on the best travel books of all time began as a list of the books I loved in 2023. As the number of books about traveling surpassed other categories, I decided to dedicate an entire blog post to the best travelogues. 

Here you will find all kinds of books about travel and adventure, including some on traveling within one’s room and another one on setting up a home in a foreign country. Some travel essays are as old as 1794 while others are from a couple of years ago. The list has solo walking adventures, solo mountaineering on horseback in the old-day Persia and current-day Iran, one travelogue is of a lone woman biker, another one of a tramp, and you will find even artists sharing their traveling experiences. I have also kept two of my best travel novels. They were so good that they belong here. Irrespective of the variety, all these books on travel have the same intention: to share the experience of exploring this wonderful, magical world and inspire us to open our senses to it.

I now have a handpicked list of the best books on writing too. These titles helped me write my first travel memoir, and some of the books here are delicious travel books to enjoy at any time.

I’m still to add many more books, but until then, enjoy. This is a complete collection of the best travel literature I have ever read. Enjoy.

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My Favorite Books of 2022

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This year I read about forty books only (apart from children’s books, online journals, and print magazines). As I don’t bother to finish the books I don’t like, most of those forty were strong books. I am sharing here my most favorite books of 2022: the ones that suffused me with courage and child-like wonder, showed me the beauty and the ordinary genius of everyday life, reaffirmed that we are shadows of our childhood, and equipped me with tools to understand life better.

Without these books I wouldn’t have been who I am today, I wouldn’t have known that ecstatic state of being out of this world that they rollerbladed me into, and my journey as a writer would have stagnated. (My all-time life-changing books are in the link.)

As a runnel of rainwater runs to meet the brook, writers run towards this common wellspring of inspiration, which is nothing else but the river of all great writing ever written. Like a thirsty tiger, we kneel, bend our knees, and drink from it every so often. Here, very humbly, I offer you some drops from that wellspring so not only you could make more sense of everything around you, but also see the beauty in all this.

Shall we?

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21 Life-Changing Books You Shouldn’t Miss [They Changed Me]

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Has anyone ever asked you to read books to change your life? I would go as far as to say reading is one of the synonyms of personal growth.

I started reading books, both fiction and non-fiction, including some great books about travel, sincerely only for the last six years. But during this time, I read books that shifted the course of my life. They exposed me to unbelievable facts. They laid open the science I didn’t know exist. They told me stories I could never imagine. These life-changing books made me cry like I hadn’t before. They made me laugh as if I had nothing to worry about. They accompanied me when I was lonely. They told me life can be lived in many ways. They reassured me it was okay to be who I was. But I could learn, too.

By a life changing book, I don’t necessarily mean a bestseller.

By life-changing books I mean the books in which the most obvious things have been said in the simplest form; that tell the history of life not as how people want us to know but how it happened; that show life writhing out of the mouth of suffering with full force; that remind us of adventures we had as little children that give sense to our today, too; that seem long and convoluted but essentially they talk about things we have always ignored.

These life changing books make us reconsider if the thing is worth beating ourselves about; they make us look at life with a child’s eyes again; they push us to ask questions we were too scared to even think about; they unravel the science behind all this and help us be a little less clueless; they give us hope that change is nothing but little things done every day; they show us compassion and tell us we are okay as who we are.

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27 Writing Tips for Beginner Writers [All You Need]

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Three years ago when I quit my investment banking job to write, I was a beginner writer. (I am still a new writer.) Update August 2025: Now I can say I am not such a new writer. I am still learning though, even when I have published my first book.

book cover travel book journeys beyond and within written by indian author priyanka gupta

MY FIRST BOOK

Journeys Beyond and Within...

IS HERE!

In my vivid narrative style (that readers love, ahem), I have told my most incredible adventures, including a nine-month solo trip to South America. In the candid book, the scoldings I got from home for not settling down and the fears and obstacles I faced, along with my career experiments, are laid bare. Witty and introspective, the memoir will make you laugh and inspire you to travel, rediscover home, and leap over the boundaries.

Sikkim Express: "Simple, free-flowing, but immensely evocative."

The Telegraph Online: "An introspective as well as an adventurous read."

The memoir is available globally. Search for the title on your country's Amazon.

Or, read a chapter first. Claim your completely free First Chapter here.

At the beginning of my writing career, I decided to travel to Chile and teach English there. People say a new environment and immersive travel experiences inspire one to write.

The high-altitude Andean landscapes took my oxygen away. Chileans stared at me until I was gone from their view. My host mother fed me pyramids of bread and cheese. Spanish dumbfounded me. During the chaos, I managed to write most days.

In the past three years, I’ve written (almost) daily, published regularly on my blog, earned by writing for clients, published poems in a book, contributed to many Medium and other big and small publications, published stories in magazines, and become a top writer on Quora and a top Travel Writer on Medium. I felt confident enough to give my best blogging tips to beginner bloggers. [Update 2022: Four+ years on, I’ve more achievements to list. But the fact that I write daily remains the same. Update 2025: I write on most days, and now have had my blog, On My Canvas, for eight years.]

Has writing been easy?

Are you joking?

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For more than eight years, I've read and written night and day to make On My Canvas—my sustenance and life's focal point—a place of inspiration, trial, adventure, and happiness. Everything here and my weekly newsletter, Looking Inwards, is free. No AI. No ads. No paywalls. No sponsors. No paycheck.

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