Readers of Katherine Dunn won’t be surprised that this was her father’s favorite sentence, or that, as a young girl, she heard it as a kind of profane poem, a secret song. For many of us, the language of Geek Love carries a similar staying power, born of Dunn’s agile use of language and her strange, beautiful diction. And as a true exegete of the expletive, she remained undividedly devoted to obscenity—both as scholar and practitioner.In On Cussing, Dunn sketches a brief history of swear words and creates something of a field guide to their types and usages, from the common threat (“I’ll squash you like a shithouse mouse”) to the portmanteau intensifier (“Fan-fucking-tastic”). But she also explores their physiology—the physical impact on the reader or listener—and makes an argument for how and when to cuss with maximum effect. Equal parts informative and hilarious, this volume will delight Dunn’s legion of fans, but it’s also a must-have for anyone looking to more successfully wield their expletives, be it in writing or in everyday speech.

    Harry Evans has edited everything from the urgent files of battlefield reporters to the complex thought processes of Henry Kissinger. He's even been knighted for his services to journalism. In DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?, he brings his indispensable insight to us all in his definite guide to writing well.The right words are oxygen to our ideas, but the digital era, with all of its TTYL, LMK, and WTF, has been cutting off that oxygen flow. The compulsion to be precise has vanished from our culture, and in writing of every kind we see a trend towards more--more speed and more information but far less clarity. Evans provides practical examples of how editing and rewriting can make for better communication, even in the digital age. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR? is an essential text, and one that will provide every writer an editor at his shoulder.

    Even the most arrogant female writer has to work over time to build an ego that is robust enough to get her through January, never mind all the way to December.' Deborah Levy

    Suddenly, every aspiring PM wanted a fast-talking, sharp-thinking ad man on their team to help dazzle voters. But what were the consequences of their fixation with the snappy and simplistic? Sam Delaney embarks on a journey to expose the shocking truth behind the general election campaigns of the last four decades. Everything is here - from the man who snorted coke in Number 10 to the politician who fell in love with her own ad exec, from the fist-fights in Downing Street to the all-day champagne binges in Whitehall offices. Sam Delaney talks to the men at the heart of the battles - Alistair Campbell, Peter Mandelson, Tim Bell, Maurice Saatchi, Norman Tebbit, Neil Kinnock - and many more. Dark, revealing and frequently hilarious, Mad Men and Bad Men tells the story of how unelected, unaccountable men ended up informing policy - and how the British public paid the price.

    She has written a stunningly original book of essays whose concerns range from the most minimal and personal subjects to the most encompassing matters of art and culture. The titles themselves speak to the volume's uniqueness: "On lice," "On sleeping in the theater," "On motherhood and stools (the furniture kind)," "Greek masks and Bell's palsy."100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write is a book in which chimpanzees, Chekhov, and child care are equally at home. A vibrant, provocative examination of the possibilities of the theater, it is also a map to a very particular artistic sensibility, and an unexpected guide for anyone who has chosen an artist's life.

    With passion and wit, Mary Oliver skillfully imparts expertise from her long, celebrated career as a disguised poet. She walks readers through exactly how a poem is built, from meter and rhyme, to form and diction, to sound and sense, drawing on poems by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others. This handbook is an invaluable glimpse into Oliver’s prolific mind??—??a must-have for all poetry-lovers.

    So he jumped into his fully alarmed Japanese S.U.V. and drove to American sports shrines for a year, everywhere from Larry Bird's boyhood home in French Lick, Indiana, to the cornfield just outside of Dyersville, Iowa, where Field of Dreams was filmed. Now in paperback, Road Swing is the story of his journey.

    

    This book includes the following features:- Selective vocabulary found on recent SATs and PSATs used in context. No more memorizing the definitions of long lists of seemingly random words in a vacuum.- Relevant, vivid, and memorable examples from pop culture, historic events, literature, and contemporary issues.- Six easy-to-tackle chapters- A Fast Review for each chapter, with quick definitions- A Final Review with sentence completion questions just like real SATs and PSATs, including complete solution explanationsBuilding on the success of previous editions, the authors of "Direct Hits Core Vocabulary of the SAT" consulted secondary school teachers, tutors, parents, and students from around the world to ensure that these words and illustrations are on target to prepare you for success on the SAT. You will find that the process is effective, worthwhile, and even fun!

    Underneath the crew cut and behind the all-American boy-next-door good looks lurked a maverick with a signature style. Whether it was his frank talk about player salaries and mistreatment by management, his passionate advocacy of progressive politics, or his efforts to convince the United States to boycott the 1968 Olympics, Bouton confronted the conservative sports world and compelled it to catch up with a rapidly changing American society.                Bouton defied tremendous odds to make the majors, won two games for the Yankees in the 1964 World Series, and staged an improbable comeback with the Braves as a thirty-nine-year-old. But it was his fateful 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and his resulting insider’s account, Ball Four, that did nothing less than reintroduce America to its national pastime in a lasting, profound way. In Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original, Mitchell Nathanson gives readers a look at Bouton’s remarkable life. He tells the unlikely story of how Bouton’s Ball Four, perhaps the greatest baseball book of all time, came into being, how it was received, and how it forever changed the way we view not only sports books but professional sports as a whole. Based on wide-ranging interviews Nathanson conducted with Bouton, family, friends, and others, he provides an intimate, inside account of Bouton’s life. Nathanson provides insight as to why Bouton saw the world the way he did, why he was so different than the thousands of players who came before him, and how, in the cliquey, cold, bottom‑line world of professional baseball, Bouton managed to be both an insider and an outsider all at once.

    The romance arc is made up of its own story beats, and the external plot and theme need to be braided to the romance arc—not the other way around. Told in conversational (and often irreverent) prose, Romancing the Beat can be read like you are sitting down to coffee with romance editor and author Gwen Hayes while she explains story structure. The way she does with her clients. Some of whom are regular inhabitants of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. Romancing the Beat is a recipe, not a rigid system. The beats don’t care if you plot or outline before you write, or if you pants your way through the drafts and do a “beat check” when you’re revising. Pantsers and plotters are both welcome. So sit down, grab a cuppa, and let’s talk about kissing books.

    This is not one of those books. On the contrary, this is a collection of terrible, awkward, and laughably unreadable excerpts that will teach you what to avoid—at all costs—if you ever want your novel published.In How Not to Write a Novel, authors Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman distill their 30 years combined experience in teaching, editing, writing, and reviewing fiction to bring you real advice from the other side of the query letter. Rather than telling you how or what to write, they identify the 200 most common mistakes unconsciously made by writers and teach you to recognize, avoid, and amend them. With hilarious "mis-examples" to demonstrate each manuscript-mangling error, they'll help you troubleshoot your beginnings and endings, bad guys, love interests, style, jokes, perspective, voice, and more. As funny as it is useful, this essential how-NOT-to guide will help you get your manuscript out of the slush pile and into the bookstore.

    Written for her blog over the years as Victoria's editing business blossomed, this advice is now hard to find and hidden - and now collected just for you, for free.

    This innovative, self-published book comprises 30 short short stories, and 30 brief essays on the psychology and practice of writing.

    In her groundbreaking first book, she brings together Zen meditation and writing in a new way. Writing practice, as she calls it, is no different from other forms of Zen practice--"it is backed by two thousand years of studying the mind." This edition includes a new preface and an interview with the author.