But according to author and creative coach Jacob Nordby, nothing could be further from the truth. Every human being is creative, and having a regular creative practice is a vital key to a happy and fulfilling life. If we don't exercise our creativity regularly, our lives can feel dull, stagnant, and rote. Many people live this way and believe “this is just the way life is,” without realizing that developing a regular creative practice can be the cure to what ails them.Nordby knows this all too well. By the time he reached his midthirties, he was running a successful mortgage company and lived in a big house with fancy cars. But he felt like he was dying inside. Starting and maintaining a creative practice is what saved his life. Now, in this powerful book, he explains how he traded in his stagnant way of life for one full of meaning and purpose, and offers specific steps to help you build your own creative practice.The Creative Cure is a call for a revolution, fostering change where all change must begin: within. This internal change will allow you to express your own creative gifts, cultivate happiness, and experience the unique feeling of fulfillment that only a creative practice can offer. Packed with powerful, transformative exercises, this book is the medicine you need to find and reinvigorate your creative soul.

    There’s a famous piece of writing advice—offered by Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, and myriad writers in between—not to use -ly adverbs like “quickly” or “fitfully.” It sounds like solid advice, but can we actually test it? If we were to count all the -ly adverbs these authors used in their careers, do they follow their own advice compared to other celebrated authors? What’s more, do great books in general—the classics and the bestsellers—share this trait?In Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve, statistician and journalist Ben Blatt brings big data to the literary canon, exploring the wealth of fun findings that remain hidden in the works of the world’s greatest writers. He assembles a database of thousands of books and hundreds of millions of words, and starts asking the questions that have intrigued curious word nerds and book lovers for generations: What are our favorite authors’ favorite words? Do men and women write differently? Are bestsellers getting dumber over time? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichés? What makes a great opening sentence? How can we judge a book by its cover? And which writerly advice is worth following or ignoring?

    George combines clear, intelligent, and functional advice on fiction writing with anecdotes from her own life, the story of her journey to publication, and inside information on how she meticulously researches and writes her novels. George's solid understanding of craft is conveyed in the enticing manner of a true storyteller, making Write Away not only a marvelous, interesting, and informative book but also a glimpse inside the world of a beloved writer.

    Use them to pry, chip, yank and sift good characters out of the place where they live in your memory, your imagination and your soul.Award-winning author Orson Scott Card explains in depth the techniques of inventing, developing and presenting characters, plus handling viewpoint in novels and short stories. With specific examples, he spells out your narrative options–the choices you'll make in creating fictional people so "real" that readers will feel they know them like members of their own families.You'll learn how to: draw the characters from a variety of sources, including a story's basic idea, real life–even a character's social circumstances make characters show who they are by the things they do and say, and by their individual "style" develop characters readers will love–or love to hate distinguish among major characters, minor characters and walk-ons, and develop each one appropriately choose the most effective viewpoint to reveal the characters and move the storytelling decide how deeply you should explore your characters' thoughts, emotions and attitudes

    DeSalvo advises her readers to explore their creative process on deeper levels by getting to know themselves and their stories more fully over a longer period of time. She writes in the same supportive manner that encourages her students, using the slow writing process to help them explore the complexities of craft. The Art of Slow Writing is the antidote to self-help books that preach the idea of fast-writing, finishing a novel a year, and quick revisions. DeSalvo makes a case that more mature writing often develops over a longer period of time and offers tips and techniques to train the creative process in this new experience.DeSalvo describes the work habits of successful writers (among them, Nobel Prize laureates) so that readers can use the information provided to develop their identity as writers and transform their writing lives. It includes anecdotes from classic American and international writers such as John Steinbeck, Henry Miller, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence as well as contemporary authors such as Michael Chabon, Junot Diaz, Jeffrey Eugenides, Ian McEwan, and Salman Rushdie. DeSalvo skillfully and gently guides writers to not only start their work, but immerse themselves fully in the process and create texts they will treasure.

     Imagine if you could use Scrivener for Windows like a seasoned professional, knowing the keyboard shortcuts, what the tools on the toolbar do; flying through the application and creating an amazing story without being distracted by having to look up how to use a feature every time you want to use it. In the back of your mind you know that the Scrivener software you bought is going to simplify your writing process and help you become more productive. You have heard about the cool split screen views, virtual cork boards and the collections feature where you can process all instances of a document at once even though you have it in several different collections. But best of all you’ve heard that you can export your content to multiple platforms without having to change the original draft document! Imagine the time you are going to save. Not to mention that if you can format your own work for export you will no longer be held hostage to the whims and schedules of anyone else. The problem is, before you can do all that, you have to learn how to use the Scrivener software. This can be time consuming if you try to learn from the Scrivener users manual which is highly technical and includes every conceivable function and feature of the software. Don’t get me wrong. The Scrivener users manual has every bit of information you will ever need regarding Scrivener because it is supposed to be like that, but it sure is difficult to weed out the bits that pertain to the project you want to write. I know because that is the way I had to learn it. What I would have liked was a Scrivener essentials guide with: Plenty of pictures, so that you can instantly recognize the regions of the user interface. Arrows pointing right at the buttons mentioned in the instructions, making them easy to find. Instructions embedded into the images they refer to so that they don’t drift onto the next page because of the personal settings on your Kindle. No distracting instructions for Macintosh users that send you on a wild goose chase after functions that are not supported by Scrivener for Windows. So I wrote a guide just like that. In it you will learn to: Open a project and customize your workspaces. Toggle between normal Text Editing Mode, Cork Board Mode and Outlining Mode and how to use each of them as well as how to use the distraction free Full Screen Mode. Split your screen to have two documents or two versions of the same document open at once. Manage your files and folders, whether you are starting from scratch in Scrivener or want to import your content from another writing application pre-sorted into chapters or sections. Make use of Scrivener’s editing tools like collections and snapshots (which takes a snap shot of the current state of a document so that you can revert to it if you don’t like your subsequent edits.) Compile your work for export to your agent, as a paperback or as an eBook. How to download some tools so that you can preview your content before you send it out. If you are ready to improve your writing process, scroll up, click the buy button and start making the most of your Scrivener Software today!

    Written over two years while the author battled suicidal depression, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life is a painful and yet richly affirming examination of what makes life worth living. Yiyun Li grew up in China and has spent her adult life as an immigrant in a country not her own. She has been a scientist, an author, a mother, a daughter and through it all she has been sustained by a profound connection with the writers and books she loves. From William Trevor and Katherine Mansfield to Soren Kierkegaard and Philip Larkin, Dear Friend is a journey through the deepest themes that bind these writers together. Interweaving personal experiences with a wide-ranging homage to her most cherished literary influences, Yiyun Li confronts the two most essential questions of her identity: Why write? And why live?