I spent a lot of time this year trying to figure things out about my art. Along the way, I came across a few books that spoke, if sometimes only indirectly, to the difficulties and confusion and emotional chaos of a struggling artist. These aren’t typical “artist books,” and in fact some aren’t about art at all. They don’t provide any specific advice on how to be an artist. Just meditations on how to feel about it.

For any other insecure artists that may be reading this, I submit to you this short list of required reading.

Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee
A sprawling ensemble novel about lots of different things, if you want it to be. Some may identify with it as an immigrant story, some as a novel about class tension in America. I identify with it as a story about being young and insecure, and facing the pressures that stop us from doing what we were really meant to do. There are no artists in this novel, but not for lack of art. Whether any of the characters ever decide to do the thing they love isn’t for us to say. But they aren’t alone in their struggles.

Confections of a Closet Master Baker by Gesine Bullock-Prado
The story of an ex-Hollywood executive turned Vermont-based small business owner and master baker. An inspiring success story of a person doing her own art on her own terms (in this case, the art of delicious cakes and pastries). Along the way, we get accounts of the frustrations of working in Hollywood (always cathartic), and, as an added bonus, each chapter concludes with a recipe for one of the many titular confections.

Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton (audio book version)
Like the previous book, this is also a story of an artist’s rebirth from the ashes of a former life in Hollywood. Unlike the previous book, however, this deals much more viscerally with the painful effect of years of constant failure, and questions of insecurity and self-doubt as the author tries, again and again, to do the thing he loves. It’s one of the most touching and honest books ever written about an artist’s vulnerability. Yes, there’s Star Trek in it, but it’s not a book about Wesley Crusher. It’s about an artist’s personal demons, public failures, and eventual rebirth doing the thing he was probably meant to do all along.