GenresNon-fiction
Essays
A mind on the page, following a question.
An essay collection is a mind keeping company with a question, often more than one, and the reader stays for the quality of the attention. Personal essays use the writer's life as evidence. Critical essays use other people's work. Lyric essays are willing to let form and feeling carry more of the meaning than an argument would. All three still need to be going somewhere. A mood, by itself, is a paragraph, not a book.
Order is part of the writing. The first essay teaches the reader how to be with you, and the later ones can go further if you have earned the trust. Don't explain the personal essays so thoroughly that nothing is left for the reader to feel, and don't make the critical ones a performance of having read more than them. A collection can be various. It shouldn't be miscellaneous. If you can swap the pieces into another writer's book and nobody would notice, they are not finished, or they don't belong together.
The kinds of book inside it
Personal
The writer's own experience is the way in, and it should open onto something a stranger can use, not close on a private moral.
Critical
Books, art, or ideas are examined by a person with a view, and the view should be argued, with the work given room to exist.
Lyric
Form and image carry more than usual, and there is still a pressure of meaning, or the experiment is only a style.
When you want a first sketch, Storywell can draft a contents list in this vein. You are still the one who writes the book. Compose an idea.