The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!"Zest. Gusto. Curiosity. These are the qualities every writer must have, as well as a spirit of adventure. In this exuberant book, the incomparable Ray Bradbury shares the wisdom, experience, and excitement of a lifetime of writing. Here are practical tips on the art of writing from a master of the craft—everything from finding original ideas to developing your own voice and style—as well as the inside story of Bradbury's own remarkable career as a prolific author of novels, stories, poems, films, and plays.Zen in the Art of Writing is more than just a how-to manual for the would-be writer: it is a celebration of the act of writing itself that will delight, impassion, and inspire the writer in you. Bradbury encourages us to follow the unique path of our instincts and enthusiasms to the place where our inner genius dwells, and he shows that success as a writer depends on how well you know one subject: your own life.

    Thompson.

    

    This concise, lively text covers all aspects of writing but is best known for its signature chapters on words, sentences, and paragraphs. Going beyond the basics of composition, the text teaches originality and elegance in writing encouraging students to develop their own written voice. Sample student papers -- including several works-in-progress - allow students to learn the writing process through the work of their peers. A brief handbook section rounds out the coverage.

    This book is a record of those seminars, which took the form of informal discussions between Borges, Norman Thomas di Giovanni--his editor and translator, Frank MacShane--then head of the writing program at Columbia, and the students. Borges's prose, poetry, and translations are handled separately and the book is divided accordingly.The prose seminar is based on a line-by-line discussion of one of Borges's most distinctive stories, "The End of the Duel." Borges explains how he wrote the story, his use of local knowledge, and his characteristic method of relating violent events in a precise and ironic way. This close analysis of his methods produces some illuminating observations on the role of the writer and the function of literature.The poetry section begins with some general remarks by Borges on the need for form and structure and moves into a revealing analysis of four of his poems. The final section, on translation, is an exciting discussion of how the art and culture of one country can be "translated" into the language of another.This book is a tribute to the brilliant craftsmanship of one of South America's--indeed, the world's--most distinguished writers and provides valuable insight into his inspiration and his method.

    His approach is especially helpful to people who get stuck or blocked in their writing, and is equally useful for writing fiction, poetry, and essays, as well as reports, lectures, and memos. The core of Elbow's thinking is a challenge against traditional writing methods. Instead of editing and outlining material in the initial steps of the writing process, Elbow celebrates non-stop or free uncensored writing, without editorial checkpoints first, followed much later by the editorial process. This approach turns the focus towards encouraging ways of developing confidence and inspiration through free writing, multiple drafts, diaries, and notes. Elbow guides the reader through his metaphor of writing as cooking: his term for heating up the creative process where the subconscious bubbles up to the surface and the writing gets good. 1998 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Writing Without Teachers. In this edition, Elbow reexamines his program and the subsequent influence his techniques have had on writers, students, and teachers. This invaluable guide will benefit anyone, whether in the classroom, boardroom, or living room, who has ever had trouble writing.

    If you find yourself using the same words over and over again making embarrassing mistakes in grammar misspelling and mispronouncing words of average difficulty you may be hurting your chances for success in school or on the job--without even knowing it! If you are not satisfied with what your English says about you, test your problem areas with this popular, remarkably effective handbook. Each of the thirty short chapters zeroes in on a different aspect of grammar, usage, spelling, and pronunciation, with challenging and often amusing exercises to help you monitor your daily progress. Your vital communication skills can improve dramatically, in just fifteen minutes a day, with--30 Days to Better English

    ENGLISH 2200, ENGLISH 2600, and ENGLISH 3200 are the original programmed courses in grammar, usage, sentence-building, capitalization, and punctuation.

    

    Abramovitsh, this work shows the symbolic importance of his central character, Mendele the Bookseller, and explores the history of Yiddish fiction in Russia during the 19th century.

    For these are the last remaining drops of the living essence of English country life.”This begins SONGS AND SOUTHERN BREEZES, the story of Bob Copper’s wanderings in Sussex and Hampshire in search of old songs and stories of the English countryside. By now [1973] the last generation of country people to be brought up in a way unchanged in centuries has begun to die out; there is a danger that the wealth of spoken dialect anecdote and old songs handed down from father to son might disappear with them – for what has been a living tradition is now rapidly becoming history.A well-known countryman and folk singer, Bob Copper makes vivid portraits of some of the men and the women he has met; the story-tellers like ex-steam threshing machine driver Len Page, for example, who could make a mousetrap of his shirt whilst still wearing it; Frank “Mush” Bond, fairground hand and casual farm labourer who turned out to have been a startling literary magpie and home philosopher in his spare time; and splendid old Fanny Thorn who, awarded the British Empire Medal for a lifetime of service on the land, was still going strong at ninety-three.Then there are the singers; fishermen of Hastings recalling contemporary accounts of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in their songs; the council hedger keeping alive memories of long forgotten crimes such as a young girl’s murder in ‘Poison in a Glass of Wine’, and many others. Fifty songs are collected with full words and music at the back of this book, some wistful, some earthily comic, telling of the old life, its hardships, its rewards, and perhaps, most appealing of all, the rich sense of fun of the people who lived it.

    Truman, features memorable quotations, quips, and comments by one of our most outspoken presidents. Quotations are arranged alphabetically by subject, with a brief year-by-year history of Truman's life, and the best things said about him during his presidency. Memorable sayings popularized by Harry S. Truman include: "Do what you think is right and let them all go to hell, " "It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose your own, " and "The buck stops here" (the sign on Truman's desk at the White House). This is the perfect book for quotation fans, history students, and anyone who experienced the Truman presidency firsthand, as well as an ideal introduction for young people to one of America's greatest presidents.