2012's Fabulous Four Writing Books

2012's top four (4) writing books that have helped me most during my writing journey to write books and make a living doing the same include, in order of usage during the writing process, the following (Amazon descriptions provided):

Cathy Yardley's Rock Your Plot: A Simple System for Plotting Your Novel (Rock Your Writing) 

ROCK YOUR PLOT: A Simple System for Plotting Your Novel teaches a clear, flexible process to help you with your:

- Premise: test your premise for inherent conflict and sustainability.

- Characterization: create strong characters with urgent goals, understandable motivation, and tons of obstacles.

- Plot outline, turning points: use those characters to build logical and powerful plot points and complete character arcs.

- Plot outline, scene-by-scene: Develop a sequence of dynamic scenes that propels your reader through your story.

This book goes straight to the point, putting theory in plain language, adding examples from blockbuster stories, and finishing each section with exercises designed to help you work with your characters to write a novel that excites you… and your readers.

Jill Elizabeth Nelson's Rivet Your Readers with Deep Point of View

Dear Novelist: Would you like your readers to live your stories, not merely read them? Deep Point of View anchors your readers inside the point of view character(s) of your novel. This handbook shows you how to perform the transformation from ordinary narrative to deep narrative in clear, easy-to-master steps. I invite you to sweep your writing to the next level with a technique that creates immediacy and intimacy with your readers and virtually eliminates show/don't tell issues.

Rachel Aaron's 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love

Have you ever wanted to double your daily word counts? Do you sometimes feel like you're crawling through your story? Do you want to write more every day without increasing the time you spend writing or sacrificing quality? It's not impossible, it's not even that hard. This is the book explaining how, with a few simple changes, I boosted my daily writing from 2000 words to over 10k a day, and how you can too."

Cathy Yardley's Rock Your Revisions: A Simple System for Revising Your Novel (Rock Your Writing)

ROCK YOUR REVISIONS: A Simple System for Revising Your Novel will show you a clear, easy-to-follow process for editing a novel. It will help you:

- Test for story structure on a macro level, providing detailed checklists for character and plot arcs.

- Test for story structure at the scene level, making sure each serves a purpose in the novel (and hopefully more than one!)

- Gain insight on the mechanics of the novel -- checking POV choice, dialogue, exposition vs. detail (showing versus telling), and more, with a systematic scene-by-scene approach.

This book goes straight to the point, putting theory in plain language, adding illustrative examples, and finishing each section with exercises designed to help you see how to not only edit a novel, but improve your reader's enjoyment of your book.
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All four books got me on track, helped me to gain traction and have jump-started my 2013 writing adventure. I would recommend each individually. Read and applied in conjunction with each other, these books provide a powerhouse of information and guidance to move any writer forward in their writing journey. Highly Recommended!