New York Times best-selling author Jennifer Probst reveals her pathway to success, from struggling as a new writer to signing a seven-figure deal. Write Naked intermingles personal essays on craft with down-to-earth advice on writing romance in the digital age. Probst will teach you how to:Commit to your current work-in-progress, get focused, and complete it on scheduleReveal raw emotions and thoughts on the page to hook your readersAssemble a street team to promote and celebrate your booksOvercome writer's block with easeDevelop themes that tie together your books and seriesWrite the most difficult elements of romance--including sex scenes--with skill and styleRegardless of the genre, every novelist faces a difficult task. Creating authentic characters and an engaging plot are challenging enough. But attempting to break into the hotter-than-ever romance genre, which is constantly flooded with new titles and fresh faces? It can feel impossible. This is where Probst's Write Naked comes in. To survive--and thrive--you need the help and wisdom of an expert. Written in Probst's unmistakable and honest voice, Write Naked is filled with the lessons and craft advice every writer needs in order to carve out a rewarding career.

    As a child, he had to take a remedial reading and writing class because he could barely write a full sentence. One editor told him his book would never be published.And yet Bryan is now a bestselling author whose books have been read by over 100,000 people and the book the editor said would never be published has been praised publicly by the foremost experts in the field.All writers doubt their ability. But Bryan's story shows doubt doesn't have to define your writing future.

    From ideas to tips to absolute musts, THE EXTROVERTED WRITER builds on Amanda's successful "Thursdays with Amanda" blog posts on ChipMacGregor.com. This easy-to-read guide breaks down the most popular social media sites and online options to give YOU the tools you need to be effective when engaging with your readers. Whether you're new to social media or a longtime pro...whether you have dozens of books under your belt or are still waiting for your first deal, this book is for you. I started reading Amanda's posts on chipmagregor.com about the time my novel was launching. Amanda's understanding of branding and her insight as an agent were extremely helpful to me as I thought about an overall platform strategy. I had no idea what to do about Facebook, and her thoughts helped me refine what I was doing and better connect with my fiction readers. Charity Hawkins, author of The Homeschool Experiment: a novel My twitter following tripled with Amanda's training and after putting her Google search rules into practice, my blog posts are drawing increased traffic and new shares. Reading The Extroverted Writer is like getting down-to-earth advice from your best friend. Your extroverted best friend that knows all the social media answers you need. Finally! Laura Anderson Kurk (laurakurk.com), author of Glass Girl and Perfect Glass Amanda Luedeke, agent at the number one literary agency in the country, MacGregor Literary, Inc., takes you through easy, step by step approaches to growing your online presence and as a result, your audience. Her lessons are straightforward, simple and applicable, no smoke and mirrors or degrees in physics required. From growing your readership on your blog, to pumping up your number of Twitter followers, to utilizing the eye candy of Pinterest to promote your books, she has it all. I recommend this book for all authors; newbies, established and everyone in between. Laura L. Smith, author"

    Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer's Guide to Finishing, Publishing, Promoting, and Surviving Your First Book has over 150 contributors from all walks of the industry, including international bestselling authors Anthony Doerr, Roxane Gay, Garth Greenwell, Lisa Ko, R. O. Kwon, Rebecca Makkai, and Ottessa Moshfegh, alongside cult favorites Sarah Gerard, Melissa Febos, Mitchell S. Jackson, and Mira Jacob. Agents, film scouts, film producers, translators, disability and minority activists, and power agents and editors also weigh in, offering advice and sharing intimate anecdotes about even the most taboo topics in the industry. Their wisdom will help aspiring authors find a foothold in the publishing world and navigate the challenges of life before and after publication with sanity and grace.Are MFA programs worth the time and money? How do people actually sit down and finish a novel? Did you get a good advance? What do you do when you feel envious of other writers? And why the heck aren’t your friends saying anything about your book? Covering questions ranging from the logistical to the existential (and everything in between), Before and After the Book Deal is the definitive guide for anyone who has ever wanted to know what it’s really like to be an author.

    This book provides all the information, guidance, and advice you need to write great science fiction to captivate your readers. It will help you understand how the genre works, the big dos and don'ts - as well as giving you the inspiration and motivation you actually need to write. Written by a leading Science Fiction novelist and a Professor in Creative Writing at the University of London - you'll discover how to let your creativity flow, create incredible worlds, and get your novel finished.ABOUT THE SERIESThe Teach Yourself Creative Writing series helps aspiring authors tell their story. Covering a range of genres from science fiction and romantic novels, to illustrated children's books and comedy, this series is packed with advice, exercises and tips for unlocking creativity and improving your writing. And because we know how daunting the blank page can be, we set up the Just Write online community at tyjustwrite, for budding authors and successful writers to connect and share.

    In You Are a Writer, Jeff Goins shares his own story of self-doubt and what it took for him to become a professional writer and best-selling author—and the principles he’s learned from seeing many others do the same. He gives you practical steps to improve your writing, get published, and build a platform that puts you in charge. This book is about what it takes to be a writer in the 21st Century. You will learn the importance of passion and discipline and how to show up every day to do the work. You Are a Writer will help you fall back in love with writing and build an audience who shares your love. It’s about living the dream of a life dedicated to words.

    Proofreading Secrets of Best-Selling Authors, by professional freelance author, editor, and proofreader Kathy Ide, is the essential go-to tool for aspiring and experienced writers and editors. This book includes all of the material from Ide's popular Polishing the PUGS book (now out of print), with added PUGS guidelines and helpful tips from multi-published authors on how to catch typos and other common mistakes. In Proofreading Secrets of Best-Selling Authors, Kathy Ide identifies the industry-standard references for books, magazines, and newspapers (which are different from the guidelines for other types of writing, such as college term papers). Using these official references, she highlights the most common mistakes writers make in the areas of punctuation, usage, grammar, and spelling (for which she uses the acronym PUGS). She also includes guidelines from The Christian Writer's Manual of Style for authors and editors who work in the inspirational market.

    Most people who try and write a novel give up or fail miserably. If you need help writing your novel, you need look no further. Publisher, editor and writer, Jim Driver, reveals many of the secrets the experts use to write bestselling novels. He says: "Taking inspiration from the Pulp Fiction writers of the 1940s and 1950s, showed me how to banish writers' block forever. I also discovered the easiest way to create and plot commercial novels." Know What Your Readers Will Buy Before You Write A Word "Writing your novel should be fun and it can be easy. But you have to know how to motivate yourself and reach a point where the words will not stop flowing out of you." How To Write A Novel – The Simple Way Take action now: use the LOOK INSIDE feature (above) to see how valuable the information inside this short eBook (less than 14,000 words). You need solid information, not useless flannel. I'm confident this will be the last book you need to read before you write your bestselling novel.

    When showing our characters’ feelings, we often use the first idea that comes to mind, and they end up smiling, nodding, and frowning too much.If you need inspiration for creating characters’ emotional responses that are personalized and evocative, this ultimate show-don’t-tell guide for emotion can help. It includes: Body language cues, thoughts, and visceral responses for 130 emotions that cover a range of intensity from mild to severe, providing innumerable options for individualizing a character’s reactions A breakdown of the biggest emotion-related writing problems and how to overcome them Advice on what should be done beforedrafting to make sure your characters’ emotions will be realistic and consistent Instruction for how to show hidden feelings and emotional subtext through dialogue and nonverbal cues And much more! The Emotion Thesaurus, in its easy-to-navigate list format, will inspire you to create stronger, fresher character expressions and engage readers from your first page to your last.

    Earning bylines in magazines and literary journals is a terrific way to get noticed and earn future opportunities in both short- and long-form writing.Writing & Selling Short Stories & Personal Essays capitalizes on the popularity of these genres by instructing on the two key steps to publishing short works: crafting excellent pieces and successfully submitting them. You'll learn how to:Develop different craft elements--including point of view, character, dialogue, scene writing, and more--specifically for short stories and essays.Recognize the qualities of excellent short works, using examples from recently published stories and essays in major journals.Understand the business of writing short, from categorizing your work and meeting submission guidelines to networking and submitting to writing contests.Master the five-step process for submitting and selling like a pro.Featuring advice and examples from a multitude of published authors, Writing & Selling Short Stories & Personal Essays is a must-have for any writer's bookshelf.

    I have to talk myself into bravery with every sentence, agreed Cynthia Ozick, sometimes every syllable. E. B. White said he admired anyone who has the guts to write anything at all.An author who has taught writing for more than thirty years,In The Courage to Write, Ralph Keyes, an author who has taught writing for more than thirty years, assures us that anxiety is felt by writers at every level, especially when they dare to do their best. He describes the sequence of courage points through which all writers must pass, from the challenge of identifying a worthwhile project to the mixture of pride and panic they feel when examining a newly published book or article.Keyes also offers specifics on how to root out dread of public performance and of the judgment of family and friends, make the best use of writers' workshops and conferences, and handle criticism of works in progress. Throughout, he includes the comments of many accomplished writers -- Pat Conroy, Amy Tan, Rita Dove, Isabel Allende, and others -- on how they transcended their own fears to produce great works.

    L. Doctorow, and Frank Rich, into a useful guide not just for writers but for everyone who wants to put their best foot forward in writing prose. Dreyer offers lessons on the ins and outs of punctuation and grammar, including how to navigate the words he calls "the confusables," like tricky homophones; the myriad ways to use (and misuse) a comma; and how to recognize--though not necessarily do away with--the passive voice. (Hint: If you can plausibly add "by zombies" to the end of a sentence, it's passive.) People are sharing their writing more than ever--on blogs, on Twitter--and this book lays out, clearly and comprehensibly, everything writers can do to keep readers focused on the real reason writers write: to communicate their ideas clearly and effectively. Chock-full of advice, insider wisdom, and fun facts on the rules (and nonrules) of the English language, this book will prove invaluable to everyone who wants to shore up their writing skills, mandatory for people who spend their time editing and shaping other people's prose, and--perhaps best of all--an utter treat for anyone who simply revels in language.

    He shows you how to transform anxiety into "productive elation," how to separate vision from revision, and how to develop your own writing agenda.This book, based on his writing seminars, research into dreams and creativity, and film development, is, as the New York Times states, "crammed with the sort of useful advice that it seems to take some people years to learn."

    And not mediocre books but high-quality ones. Why? Because that’s what readers expect and want.Regardless of whether you write fiction or nonfiction, if you want to get established as an author, you need to be productive. Highly productive.You can’t just write one terrific book and call it good, expecting that singular work to carry you atop the wave of success for years to come.Studies show readers want 3-4 books a year from their favorite authors. And to build traction and a growing audience, authors need to deliver.But how many writers have the time to write that many books?In today’s busy world, amid distractions and demands, it’s hard to carve out time to write even one book a year.But plenty of super-busy people find time to crank out numerous high-quality books. And in this in-depth look on the topic, you’ll learn the strategies that help them—and will help you—be super productive. If you want to grow your readership, you need to write the best books you can—and that means strategizing to optimize every factor that impacts your writing. Here are some of the things you’ll learn in Crank it Out!: How to dig deep into the Productivity ABCs—attitude, biology, and choices—and analyze yourself to prepare to make the needed adjustments to be super productive How to spot destructive attitudes and rewire them to allow you to break through to success How to determine your biological prime time and identify your peak hours to write in order to get the most out of your writing time How to hack around your excuses, bad habits, and distractions that are blocking your way How to alter your sleeping, eating, and other behaviors to ensure peak performance How to thwart self-sabotage and perfectionism, which prevent you from becoming the super-productive writer you long to be Plenty of people who work full-time, have heavy family responsibilities, or deal daily with chronic health issues or physical challenges find ways to crank out books. They do so because writing is important to them. How badly do you want it? Now’s the time to stop making excuses and start becoming proactive. Instead of complaining you have no time to write, take the challenge this book presents.There’s a surefire way to becoming a super-productive writer, and it’s as simple as ABC.

    Quincy Jones, Diane Keaton, Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, John Cleese and David Bowie are just a few of his celebrity alumni. Writers, producers, development executives and agents all flock to his lecture series, praising it as a mesmerizing and intense learning experience. In Story, McKee expands on the concepts he teaches in his $450 seminars (considered a must by industry insiders), providing readers with the most comprehensive, integrated explanation of the craft of writing for the screen. No one better understands how all the elements of a screenplay fit together, and no one is better qualified to explain the "magic" of story construction and the relationship between structure and character than Robert McKee.