Becoming a Writer


Dorothea Brande - 1934
    Brande believed passionately that although people have varying amounts of talent, anyone can write. It's just a question of finding the "writer's magic"--a degree of which is in us all. She also insists that writing can be both taught and learned. So she is enraged by the pessimistic authors of so many writing books who rejoice in trying to put off the aspiring writer by constantly stressing how difficult it all is.With close reference to the great writers of her day--Wolfe, Forster, Wharton and so on--Brande gives practical but inspirational advice about finding the right time of day to write and being very self disciplined about it--"You have decided to write at four o'clock, and at four o'clock you must write." She's strong on confidence building and there's a lot about cheating your unconscious which will constantly try to stop you writing by coming up with excuses. Then there are exercises to help you get into the right frame of mind and to build up writing stamina. She also shows how to harness the unconscious, how to fall into the "artistic coma," then how to re-emerge and be your own critic.This is Dorothea Brande's legacy to all those who have ever wanted to express their ideas in written form. A sound, practical, inspirational and charming approach to writing, it fulfills on finding "the writer's magic."

Drawing Dimension - Shading Techniques: A Shading Guide for Teachers and Students (How to Draw Cool Stuff)


Catherine V. Holmes - 2017
    By controlling pencil pressure and stroke, understanding light and having knowledge of blending techniques, an artist can enhance their work and offer the “wow” factor needed to produce realistic artworks. Drawing Dimension - A Shading Guide for Teachers and Students offers a series of shading tutorials that are easy to understand and simple to follow. It goes beyond the standard "step by step" instruction to offer readers an in-depth look at a variety of shading techniques and their applications. Inside this book is a series of lessons designed to teach you how to add dimension to your own drawings, how to analyze real life objects and shade, create highlights, blend tones, and produce realistic drawings with ease. We will explore hatching, cross hatching, and stippling techniques and learn how to use contrast to set a mood and create a focal point. At last - we’ll put all of these skills to the test and work together to produce a beautiful piece of art. Drawing Dimension - A Shading Guide for Teachers and Students includes many resources to help you along the way through examples, tips on what you should aim for, and pitfalls to avoid. Each lesson is tailored to help you refine your shading techniques so you can add more depth and realism to your work. The book is perfectly suitable for beginners and moderates of all ages, students and teachers, professionals and novices; anyone can learn how to shade like a pro!

The Literature Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained


James Canton - 2016
    Around 100 crystal-clear articles explore landmark novels, short stories, plays, and poetry that reinvented the art of writing in their time, whether Ancient Greece, post-classical Europe, or modern-day Korea.As part of DK's award-winning Big Ideas Simply Explained series, The Literature Book uses infographics and images to explain key ideas and themes. Biographies of important authors offer insight into their lives and other writings, and a section on Further Reading details more than 150 additional works to explore.Discover masterpieces from the world's greatest authors, and explore the context, creative history, and literary traditions that influenced each major work of fiction with The Literature Book.Series Overview: Big Ideas Simply Explained series uses creative design and innovative graphics, along with straightforward and engaging writing, to make complex subjects easier to understand. These award-winning books provide just the information needed for students, families, or anyone interested in concise, thought-provoking refreshers on a single subject.

History of Art


H.W. Janson - 1962
    In the 1st edition, published in 1962, he spoke to that perennial reader he gently called "the troubled layman." His opening paragraph revealed his sympathy: "Why is this supposed to be art?" he quoted rhetorically. "How often have we heard this question asked--or asked it ourselves, perhaps--in front of one of the strange, disquieting works that we are likely to find nowadays in the museum or art exhibition?" Keeping that curious, questioning perspective in mind, he wrote a history of art from cave painting to Picasso that was singularly welcoming, illuminating & exciting. Sojourning thru this book, a reader is offered every amenity for a comfortable trip. Because he never assumes knowledge on the part of the reader, a recent immigrant from Mars could comprehend Western art from this text. The only assumption the Jansons have made is that with a little guidance everyone can come to understand the artifacts that centuries of architecture, sculpture, design & painting have deposited in our paths. Countless readers have proven the Jansons right & found their lives enriched in the process.

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction


William Zinsser - 1976
    It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet. Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental priciples as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more than a million copies sold, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.

Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You


Clare Walker Leslie - 2000
    Encouraging you to make journaling a part of your daily routine, Keeping a Nature Journal is full of engaging exercises and stimulating prompts that will help you hone your powers of observation and appreciate new aspects of nature’s endlessly varied beauty.

Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity


Michelle Bates - 2006
    Whether you're an experienced enthusiast or toy camera neophyte, you'll find Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity chock full of tantalizing tips, fun facts and, of course, absolutely striking photographs taken with the lowest tech and simplest tools around. I got me a Holga. Now What? Holgas need a little TLC before they're ready to go out in the world and start snapping. Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity digs through all the different Holga models available, lays out thier advantages and quirks and helps you get up to speed on all the prep you'll need to do to jump in on the toy-camera revolution. What should I Feed my Holga? Holgas, Dianas, other toy cameras can use many types of film. Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity, lays all their pros and cons on the line letting you get some images you want, and some you could just never imagine. Can Holga come out to play?Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity will help you steer your way through all the details and quirks of taking wonderful and weird pictures with your toy camera. We'll explore possible subjects and the best way to shoot them and play with all sorts of techniques from vignetting, to multiple exposures, to panoramas, close-ups, movement, night photography, flare, flash, color and more. For the Intrepid Holga-ographerFor the Holga master, we've diagramed and described advanced toy camera modifications and introduce you to a variety of problems, solutions and inventions born from toy cameras' "limitations." What Next?From negatives to prints or pixels, we help you navigate your post-shooting choices.Don't ForgetThe Diana, Banner, Action Sampler, Photo Blaster, and Lensbaby are all toy cameras with their own loveable qualities. We'll look beyond the Holga to show a whole wide world of toys. Artists Artists in this book include: Michael AckermanJonathan BaileyEric Havelock-BaillieJames BalogBetsy BellSusan BowenLaura BurltonDavid BurnettNancy BursonPerry DilbeckJill EnfieldAnnette FournetMegan GreenWesley KennedyTeru KuwayamaMary Ann LynchAnne Arden McDonaldDaniel MillerTed OrlandRobert OwenBecky RamotowskiNancy RexrothFrancisco Mata RosasRichard RossFranco SalmoiraghiMichael SherwinHarvey SteinGordon StettiniusMark SinkKurt SmithSandy SorlienPauline St. Denis;-p r a b u!

Coastal Cruising Made Easy (The American Sailing Association's Coastal Cruising Made Easy)


American Sailing Association
    The text is published in full color and contains striking sailing photography from well-known photographer Billy Black, and world-class illustrations from award-winning illustrator Peter Bull. One of the text's most distinguishing features is its user friendly "spreads" in which instructional topics are self-contained on opposing pages throughout the book. This easy to read learning tool follows the critically acclaimed Sailing Made Easy, which Sailing Magazine called "best in class" upon its release in 2010. Sailing Made Easy is the #1 resource in basic sailing education, and Coastal Cruising Made Easy is poised to become the industry standard in intermediate sailing education.

A Writer's Reference


Diana Hacker - 1989
    Integrated MLA 2003 update

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative


Austin Kleon - 2012
    That’s the message from Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who knows that creativity is everywhere, creativity is for everyone. A manifesto for the digital age, Steal Like an Artist is a guide whose positive message, graphic look and illustrations, exercises, and examples will put readers directly in touch with their artistic side.

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer


Roy Peter Clark - 2006
    "You need tools, not rules." His book distills decades of experience into 50 tools that will help any writer become more fluent and effective. WRITING TOOLS covers everything from the most basic ("Tool 5: Watch those adverbs") to the more complex ("Tool 34: Turn your notebook into a camera") and provides more than 200 examples from literature and journalism to illustrate the concepts. For students, aspiring novelists, and writers of memos, e-mails, PowerPoint presentations, and love letters, here are 50 indispensable, memorable, and usable tools. "Pull out a favorite novel or short story, and read it with the guidance of Clark's ideas. . . . Readers will find new worlds in familiar places. And writers will be inspired to pick up their pens." -Boston Globe"For all the aspiring writers out there-whether you're writing a novel or a technical report-a respected scholar pulls back the curtain on the art." -Atlanta Journal-Constitution"This is a useful tool for writers at all levels of experience, and it's entertainingly written, with plenty of helpful examples." -Booklist

A Little History of the World


E.H. Gombrich - 1936
    Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser was published in Vienna to immediate success, and is now available in seventeen languages across the world. Toward the end of his long life, Gombrich embarked upon a revision and, at last, an English translation. A Little History of the World presents his lively and involving history to English-language readers for the first time. Superbly designed and freshly illustrated, this is a book to be savored and collected. In forty concise chapters, Gombrich tells the story of man from the stone age to the atomic bomb. In between emerges a colorful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, and the spread and limitations of science. This is a text dominated not by dates and facts, but by the sweep of mankind's experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements and an acute witness to its frailties. The product of a generous and humane sensibility, this timeless account makes intelligible the full span of human history.

Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera


Bryan Peterson - 1990
    Peterson stresses the importance of metering the subject for a starting exposure, and then explains how to use various exposure meters and different kinds of lighting. The book contains lessons on each element of the exposure-aperature, shutter speed, iso-and how it relates to the other two in terms of depth of field, freezing and blurring action, and shooting in low light or at night. A section on special techniques explores such options as deliberate under- and overexposures, how to produce double exposures, bracketing, shooting the moon, and the use of filters. Understanding Exposure demonstrates that there are always creative choices about how to expose a picture-and that the decision is up to the photographer, not the camera.

The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had


Susan Wise Bauer - 2003
    In her previous book, The Well-Trained Mind, the author provided a road map of classical education for parents wishing to home-school their children, and that book is now the premier resource for home-schoolers. In this new book, Bauer takes the same elements and techniques and adapts them to the use of adult readers who want both enjoyment and self-improvement from the time they spend reading.The Well-Educated Mind offers brief, entertaining histories of five literary genres—fiction, autobiography, history, drama, and poetry—accompanied by detailed instructions on how to read each type. The annotated lists at the end of each chapter—ranging from Cervantes to A. S. Byatt, Herodotus to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich—preview recommended reading and encourage readers to make vital connections between ancient traditions and contemporary writing.The Well-Educated Mind reassures those readers who worry that they read too slowly or with below-average comprehension. If you can understand a daily newspaper, there's no reason you can't read and enjoy Shakespeare's Sonnets or Jane Eyre. But no one should attempt to read the "Great Books" without a guide and a plan. Susan Wise Bauer will show you how to allocate time to your reading on a regular basis; how to master a difficult argument; how to make personal and literary judgments about what you read; how to appreciate the resonant links among texts within a genre—what does Anna Karenina owe to Madame Bovary?—and also between genres. Followed carefully, the advice in The Well-Educated Mind will restore and expand the pleasure of the written word.

Zen in the Art of Writing


Ray Bradbury - 1973
    The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!"Zest. Gusto. Curiosity. These are the qualities every writer must have, as well as a spirit of adventure. In this exuberant book, the incomparable Ray Bradbury shares the wisdom, experience, and excitement of a lifetime of writing. Here are practical tips on the art of writing from a master of the craft—everything from finding original ideas to developing your own voice and style—as well as the inside story of Bradbury's own remarkable career as a prolific author of novels, stories, poems, films, and plays.Zen in the Art of Writing is more than just a how-to manual for the would-be writer: it is a celebration of the act of writing itself that will delight, impassion, and inspire the writer in you. Bradbury encourages us to follow the unique path of our instincts and enthusiasms to the place where our inner genius dwells, and he shows that success as a writer depends on how well you know one subject: your own life.