Informed by story consultant Lisa Cron's science-based insights into how story structure is built into the architecture of the brain, this guide shows writers how to plumb the nitty-gritty details of their raw idea to organically generate a story scene by scene. Once writers reach the end of Cron's program, they will have both a blueprint that works and plenty of compelling writing suitable for their finished novel--allowing them to write forward with confidence.

    Turn on a single lamp and read it while you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone sleeps next to you. Say it over to yourself in a place where silence reigns and the din of culture-the constant buzzing noise that surrounds you-has momentarily stopped. This poem has come from a great distance to find you." So begins this astonishing book by one of our leading poets and critics. In an unprecedented exploration of the genre, Hirsch writes about what poetry is, why it matters, and how we can open up our imaginations so that its message-which is of vital importance in day-to-day life-can reach us and make a difference. For Hirsch, poetry is not just a part of life, it is life, and expresses like no other art our most sublime emotions. In a marvelous reading of world poetry, including verse by such poets as Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Pablo Neruda, William Wordsworth, Sylvia Plath, Charles Baudelaire, and many more, Hirsch discovers the meaning of their words and ideas and brings their sublime message home into our hearts. A masterful work by a master poet, this brilliant summation of poetry and human nature will speak to all readers who long to place poetry in their lives but don't know how to read it.

    This definitive reference work examines his novels and short stories, as well as the motion pictures, miniseries, and teleplays that King has written. The authors spent three years discovering and tying together the threads that exist in King's fiction. Their insightful results will entertain and surprise readers new and old. Once you have read The Stephen King Universe, you will never read Stephen King the same way againContents:The Worlds of The Dark Tower and The Stand --The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger --The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three --The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands --The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass --The Eyes of the Dragon --The Talisman --Hearts in Atlantis --The Stand --Related Tales --"Night Surf" (from Night Shift) --"The Little Sisters of Eluria" --The Prime Reality, Part I: Derry --IT --Insomnia --Bag of Bones --Related Tales --"Autopsy Room Four" (from Six Stories) --"The Road Virus Heads North" --The Prime Reality, Part II: Castle Rock --The Dead Zone --Cujo --The Dark Half --Needful Things --Related Tales --"The Body" (from Different Seasons) --"Nona" (from Skeleton Crew) --"Uncle Otto's Truck" (from Skeleton Crew) --"Gramma" (from Skeleton Crew) --"The Sun Dog" (from Four Past Midnight) --"It Grows on You" (from Nightmares and Dreamscapes) --"The Man in the Black Suit" (from Six Stories) --The Prime Reality, Part III: Jerusalem's Lot and Stephen King's Maine --Carrie --'Salem's Lot --Pet Sematary --Cycle of the Werewolf --Gerald's Game --Dolores Claiborne --Storm of the Century --The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon --Related Tales --"Jerusalem's Lot" (from Night Shift) --"Graveyard Shift" (from Night Shift) --"One for the Road" (from Night Shift) --"Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" (from Different Seasons) --"Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" (from Skeleton Crew) --"The Reach" (from Skeleton Crew) --"Secret Window, Secret Garden" (from Four Past Midnight).

    It's a compilation of my daily ramblings as a first time novelist encouraging myself and others to bite the bullet and do it despite the fear of the blank paper, the insecurities, and the angst every writer faces when trying to bleed the story out. My Twitter followers asked me to make this book. They said they want to carry it around in their pockets and take it out each time they feel stuck, scared, or simply need to smile. They tell me my tweets are encouraging and funny. You be the judge.

    —New York Times Book ReviewNo writer I know of comes close to even trying to articulate the weird magic of poetry as Ruefle does. She acknowledges and celebrates in the odd mystery and mysticism of the act—the fact that poetry must both guard and reveal, hint at and pull back... Also, and maybe most crucially, Ruefle’s work is never once stuffy or overdone: she writes this stuff with a level of seriousness-as-play that’s vital and welcome, that doesn’t make writing poetry sound anything but wild, strange, life-enlargening fun. -The Kenyon ReviewProfound, unpredictable, charming, and outright funny...These informal talks have far more staying power and verve than most of their kind. Readers may come away dazzled, as well as amused... —Publishers WeeklyThis is a book not just for poets but for anyone interested in the human heart, the inner-life, the breath exhaling a completion of an idea that will make you feel changed in some way. This is a desert island book. —Matthew DickmanThe accomplished poet is humorous and self-deprecating in this collection of illuminating essays on poetry, aesthetics and literature... —San Francisco ExaminerOver the course of fifteen years, Mary Ruefle delivered a lecture every six months to a group of poetry graduate students. Collected here for the first time, these lectures include "Poetry and the Moon," "Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World," and "Lectures I Will Never Give." Intellectually virtuosic, instructive, and experiential, Madness, Rack, and Honey resists definition, demanding instead an utter—and utterly pleasurable—immersion. Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.Mary Ruefle has published more than a dozen books of poetry, prose, and erasures. She lives in Vermont.

    Her exuberant, critically acclaimed teaching guide takes instructors, writers, and general readers into the very heart and intensity of life and the craft of expressing what one feels through the written word.

    In this com-plementary follow up, Mosley guides the writer through the elements of not just any fiction writing, but the kind of writing that transcends convention and truly stands out. How does one approach the genius of writers like Melville, Dickens, or Twain? In The Elements of Fiction, Walter Mosley contemplates the answer.In a series of instructive and conversational chapters, Mosley demonstrates how to master fiction's most essential elements: character and char-acter development, plot and story, voice and narrative, context and description, and more. The result is a vivid depiction of the writing process, from the blank page to the first draft to rewriting, and rewriting again. Throughout, The Elements of Fiction is enriched by brilliant demonstrative examples that Mosley himself has written here for the first time.Inspiring, accessible, and told in a voice both trustworthy and wise, The Elements of Fiction writing will intrigue and encourage writers and readers alike.