How does an artist accomplish such an achievement, connecting deeply with an audience never met? In this groundbreaking book, one of our culture’s beloved artists offers a detailed account of her own creative process, inspirations, and unexpected connections. Patti Smith, a National Book Award-winning author, first presents an original and beautifully crafted tale of obsession—a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector who ruthlessly seeks his prize, a relationship forged of need both craven and exalted. She then takes us on a second journey, exploring the sources of her story. We travel through the South of France to Camus’s house, and visit the garden of the great publisher Gallimard where the ghosts of Mishima, Nabokov, and Genet mingle. Smith tracks down Simone Weil’s grave in a lonely cemetery, hours from London, and winds through the nameless Paris streets of Patrick Modiano’s novels. Whether writing in a café or a train, Smith generously opens her notebooks and lets us glimpse the alchemy of her art and craft in this arresting and original book on writing.The Why I Write series is based on the Windham-Campbell Lectures, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University.

     While most of us might take dictionaries for granted, the process of writing them is in fact as lively and dynamic as language itself. With sharp wit and irreverence, Kory Stamper cracks open the complex, obsessive world of lexicography--from the agonizing decisions about what and how to define, to the knotty questions of usage in an ever-changing language. She explains why small words are the most difficult to define (have you ever tried to define is ?), how it can take nine months to define a single word, and how our biases about language and pronunciation can have tremendous social influence. Throughout, Stamper brings to life the hallowed halls (and highly idiosyncratic cubicles) of Merriam-Webster, a world inhabited by quirky, erudite individuals who quietly shape the way we communicate. A sure delight for all lovers of words, Word by Word might also quietly improve readers grasp and use of the English language."

    Sometimes a writer needs something with a little more expressive power; a word or phrase that helps the reader visualize the tonal quality or mood of the character doing the talking.For many years, writers have been eagerly awaiting the publication of a resource to help them with this dilemma. Thankfully, that wait is finally over. Now there's a way for any writer, regardless of their experience, to craft dialogue tags that add emotion and vibrancy to their storytelling; all while avoiding tired and worn out cliches.Dahlia Evans has compiled a dialogue thesaurus unlike anything ever published. This unique sourcebook is filled to the brim with words and phrases gathered from hundreds of bestselling novels. Finally, you will be able to open up vistas of endless inspiration and bring your dialogue to life.Inside You'll Discover:# Over 500 dialogue and action tags you can use instead of 'said'.# More than 2900 adverbs that can be used to describe speech.# Thousands of emotion and feeling words in adjective and noun form.# A thousand phrases to describe body language and movement.# Tons of example sentences to help solidify your understanding.# And best of all, words are sorted in alphabetical order, as well as by category.'The Dialogue Thesaurus' is the first book of its kind; a thesaurus geared towards writers who want to frame their dialogue with compelling and expressive words and phrases.

    She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well.For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning graduate teaching prizes for her highly selective seminar at Syracuse, where she mentored such future hit authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas. In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and “black belt sinner,” providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre.Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers’ experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr’s own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told— and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate.Joining such classics as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today’s most popular literary forms—a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft.

    Today, linguists use massive computer power--including the world's largest language databank, the Oxford Corpus, which contains more than two billion words--to determine for the first time definitively how the English language is used. From evidence contained in the gargantuan Oxford Corpus, Jeremy Butterfield here uncovers a wealth of fascinating facts about the English language. Where does our vocabulary come from? How do word meanings change? How is our language really being used? This entertaining book has the up-to-date and authoritative answers to all the key questions about our language. Butterfield takes a thorough look at the English language and exposes its peculiarities and penchants, its development and difficulties, revealing exactly how it operates. We learn, for instance, that we use language in chunks of words--as one linguist put it, "we know words by the company that they keep." For instance, the word quintessentially is joined half the time with a nationality--something is "quintessentially American" or "quintessentially British." Likewise, in comparing eccentric with quirky, the Corpus reveals that eccentric almost always appears in reference to people, as an "eccentric uncle," while quirky usually refers to the actions of people, as in "quirky behavior." Using such observations, Butterfield explains how dictionary makers decide which words to include, how they find definitions, and how the Corpus influences the process. Covering all areas of English, from spelling and idioms to the future of English, and with entertaining examples and useful charts throughout, this compelling and lively book will delight word lovers everywhere.

    Whether she's writing about date rape or political adultery or writers from John Updike to Gillian Flynn, Mary Gaitskill reads her subjects deftly and aphoristically and moves beyond them to locate the deep currents of longing, ambition, perversity, and loneliness in the American unconscious. She shows us the transcendentalism of the Talking Heads, the melancholy of Bjork, the playfulness of artist Laurel Nakadate. She celebrates the clownish grandiosity and the poetry of Norman Mailer's long career and maps the sociosexual cataclysm embodied by porn star Linda Lovelace. And in the deceptively titled "Lost Cat," she explores how the most intimate relationships may be warped by power and race.Witty, tender, beautiful, and unsettling, Somebody with a Little Hammer displays the same heat-seeking, revelatory understanding for which we value Gaitskill's fiction.

    Martin’s Press, Thomas McCormack gives practical guidance about how to plan, write, and revise a novel. A standard reference for editors since its first publication in 1988, The Fiction Editor has also become popular with writers because McCormack’s advice is constructive at every step of the creative process. From individual word choice right up to the overarching effect of the work as a whole, he details how to structure the novel, choose the characters, drive the story, diagnose narrative ailments, and find and apply specific remedies.In this revised second edition, McCormack takes advantage of almost two decades of additional experience to clarify and expand on what he has learned."Written in an amiable tone, often using examples, hypothetical writing scenarios, or dialogue-style discourse between industry professionals to clarify its points, The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist is a superb handbook for fiction writers but especially recommended for prospective and professional fiction editors."—Midwest Book ReviewThomas McCormack edited authors as diverse as James Herriot (All Creatures Great and Small) and Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs). He was awarded LMP's Lifetime Achievement Award and the AAP's Curtis Benjamin Award for Creative Publishing. For two years, he wrote "The Cheerful Skeptic" column in Publishers Weekly.

    And yes--so can you! This method is not only effective, it’s fun. You’ll never worry about the blank page again!An outline, or plot, is really just a roadmap through your story. A flexible roadmap. One possible route. There might be detours, once you start writing. You might take side trips you didn’t even see coming.But your roadmap helps you make sure you’re always headed in the right direction. Even diehard pantsers need to know where they’re going, if they want to actually get there.This three-hour method for outlining a book is my exact method for making sure that when I start writing a story, I finish it. I’m excited to teach it to you.You’ll learn how to:- Go from the spark of an idea to five key plot points.- Expand your key plot points into 30 or 40 scenes.- Use those scenes to write a fast zero draft.If you’re ready to actually write that book, this is the first step!Shaunta Grimes writes young adult and middle grade novels. She runs an online writing community, Ninja Writers, that has more than 50,000 members from around the world.

    Rest is something to do when the important things are done-but they are never done. Looking at different forms of rest, from sleep to vacation, Silicon Valley futurist and business consultant Alex Soojung-Kim Pang dispels the myth that the harder we work the better the outcome. He combines rigorous scientific research with a rich array of examples of writers, painters, and thinkers---from Darwin to Stephen King---to challenge our tendency to see work and relaxation as antithetical. "Deliberate rest," as Pang calls it, is the true key to productivity, and will give us more energy, sharper ideas, and a better life. Rest offers a roadmap to rediscovering the importance of rest in our lives, and a convincing argument that we need to relax more if we actually want to get more done.

    In Whose Story Is This? Rebecca Solnit appraises what's emerging and why it matters and what the obstacles are.

    Regan Arts has teamed up with the literary charity 826National, which will receive a portion of the book’s proceeds to provide students ages 6–18 with opportunities to explore their creativity and improve their writing skills.Contributors include Al Roker, Carl Hiaasen, Dave Eggers, Emma Straub, Eric Idle, Fay Weldon, Fran Lebowitz, Gillian Flynn, Gregory Maguire, Jeff Kinney, Jim Shepard, Laura Lippmann, Lev Grossman, Liev Schreiber, Margaret Atwood, Mayim Bialik, Nelson DeMille, Rosanne Cash, Susan Orlean, Tim Gunn, and Tommy Hilfiger, among others.

    Half the 'rules' they use to humiliate others are really just judgement calls and the rest they don't even understand themselves. Learn the truth of basic grammar and punctuation from June Casagrande in chapters like:I'm Writing This While Naked--The Oh-So Steamy Predicate NominativeI'll Take "I Feel Like a Moron" for $200, Alex--When to Put Punctuation Inside Quotation MarksSnobbery Up with Which You Should Not Put--PrepositionsHyphens--Life-Sucking, Mom-and-Apple-Pie-Hating, Mime-Loving, Nerd-Fight-Inciting Daggers of the DamnedIn this collection of hilarious anecdotes and essays Casagrande delivers practical lessons not found anywhere else, demystifying the subject and taking it back from the snobs.

    Whether puncturing the lies of politicians, wittily dissecting the English character or telling unpalatable truths about war, Orwell's timeless, uncompromising essays are more relevant, entertaining and essential than ever in today's era of spin.Contents:"Why I Write", first published 1946"The Lion and the Unicorn", first published 1940"A Hanging", first published 1931"Politics and the English Language", first published 1946

    Pressfield believes that “resistance” is the greatest enemy, and he offers many unique and helpful ways to overcome it.

    "Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences is a 2006 book by author Kitty Burns Florey about the history and art of sentence diagramming. Florey learned to diagram sentences as a Catholic school student at St. John the Baptist Academy in Syracuse, New York. Diagramming sentences is useful, Florey says, because it teaches us to "focus on the structures and patterns of language, and this can help us appreciate it as more than just a vehicle for expressing minimal ideas". Florey said in a 2012 essay "Taming Sentences":When we unscrew a sentence, figure out what makes it tick and reassemble it, we interact with our old familiar language differently, more deeply, responding to the way its individual components fit together. Once we understand how sentences work (what's going on? what action is taking place? who is doing it and to whom is it being done?), it's harder to write an incorrect one.Sentence diagramming was introduced by Brainerd Kellogg and Alonzo Reid, professors at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, in their book History of English published in 1877."Keywords: KITTY BURNS FLOREY SISTER BERNADETTE DOG BARKING DIAGRAMMING SENTENCES ENGLISH GRAMMAR REFERENCE LANGUAGE