lunabee34

"I don't find most writing manuals actually effective for me personally in a 'learning how to do this better' kind of way, so I enjoy writing manuals that are more narrative and about the author's experience of writing"

Oh, man, me too. When I was a teen in the seventies, there were lots of memoirs of SF writers being published. My two favorites are the anthology "Hell's Cartographers" and Frederik Pohl's "The Way the Future Was." In the last years of his life, Pohl did a similar blog - http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com - which was *so cool*, seeing the 1970s time-travelled into the present day. Here's a sample entry:

http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2011/01/chip-delany-part-2-the-miracle-of-dhalgren/

I'm also very fond of Jacqueline Jackson's "Turn Not Pale, Beloved Snail," which is a combination of instruction and family memoir.