Book picks similar to
Write Smart, Write Happy: How to Become a More Productive, Resilient and Successful Writer by Cheryl St. John
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nonfiction
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Hustling Hard For A Happily Ever After: …and how I made my dreams a reality one mantra at a time...
Frankie Love - 2020
She believes you can too.
The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation Into the Writing Life
Julia Cameron - 1998
With the techniques and anecdotes in The Right to Write, readers learn to make writing a natural, intensely personal part of life. Cameron's instruction and examples include the details of the writing processes she uses to create her own bestselling books. She makes writing a playful and realistic as well as a reflective event. Anyone jumping into the writing life for the first time and those already living it will discover the art of writing is never the same after reading The Right to Write.
The Elements of Style
William Strunk Jr. - 1918
Throughout, the emphasis is on promoting a plain English style. This little book can help you communicate more effectively by showing you how to enliven your sentences.
Making Shapely Fiction
Jerome Stern - 1991
You will see how a work takes form and shape once you grasp the principles of momentum, tension, and immediacy. "Tension," Stern says, "is the mother of fiction. When tension and immediacy combine, the story begins." Dialogue and action, beginnings and endings, the true meaning of "write what you know," and a memorable listing of don'ts for fiction writers are all covered. A special section features an Alphabet for Writers: entries range from Accuracy to Zigzag, with enlightening comments about such matters as Cliffhangers, Point of View, Irony, and Transitions.
Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping
Matthew Salesses - 2021
The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind; what we call craft is informed by their cultural values. In this bold and original examination of elements of writing—including plot, character, conflict, structure, and believability—and aspects of workshop—including the silenced writer and the imagined reader—Matthew Salesses asks questions to invigorate these familiar concepts. He upends Western notions of how a story must progress. How can we rethink craft, and the teaching of it, to better reach writers with diverse backgrounds? How can we invite diverse storytelling traditions into literary spaces?Drawing from examples including One Thousand and One Nights, Curious George, Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, and the Asian American classic No-No Boy, Salesses asks us to reimagine craft and the workshop. In the pages of exercises included here, teachers will find suggestions for building syllabi, grading, and introducing new methods to the classroom; students will find revision and editing guidance, as well as a new lens for reading their work. Salesses shows that we need to interrogate the lack of diversity at the core of published fiction: how we teach and write it. After all, as he reminds us, "When we write fiction, we write the world."
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.
The Forest for the Trees
Betsy Lerner - 2000
From her long experience working with successful writers and discovering new voices, Lerner looks at different writer personality types and addresses the concerns of writers just getting started as well as those stalled mid-career.
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
Stanley Fish - 2011
Drawing on a wide range of great writers, from Philip Roth to Antonin Scalia to Jane Austen, How to Write a Sentence is much more than a writing manual—it is a spirited love letter to the written word, and a key to understanding how great writing works.
Stein on Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies
Sol Stein - 1995
As the always clear and direct Stein explains here, This is not a book of theory. It is a book of usable solutions--how to fix writing that is flawed, how to improve writing that is good, how to create interesting writing in the first place. With examples from bestsellers as well as from students' drafts, Stein offers detailed sections on characterization, dialogue, pacing, flashbacks, trimming away flabby wording, the so-called triage method of revision, using the techniques of fiction to enliven nonfiction, and more.
Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different
Chuck Palahniuk - 2020
Consider it a classic in the making.
The Art of X-Ray Reading
Roy Peter Clark - 2016
In THE ART OF X-RAY READING, Clark invites you to don your X-ray reading glasses and join him on a guided tour through some of the most exquisite and masterful literary works of all time, from The Great Gatsby to Lolita to The Bluest Eye, and many more. Along the way, he shows you how to mine these masterpieces for invaluable writing strategies that you can add to your arsenal and apply in your own writing. Once you've experienced X-ray reading, your writing will never be the same again.
Fierce on the Page: Become the Writer You Were Meant to Be and Succeed on Your Own Terms
Sage Cohen - 2016
Live your best life. Make your greatest impact.You have everything you need--and you are everything you need--to do the writing you are meant to do. And yet the path to success can be difficult to find and follow.Veteran author and writing guide Sage Cohen believes that ferocity is your best compass for finding your true way forward. She shows you how to transform your attitude and practices so you can:- Unleash your creativity - Cultivate your strengths - Overcome resistance, fear, and other obstacles - Define success on your own terms - Move intentionally toward your goals - Become unstoppable in your evolutionIn this collection of contemplative and inspiring essays, you'll unlock the secrets to naming your deepest desires, eliminating the challenges that hold you back, and committing to your practice. Fierce on the Page is your trustworthy companion for crafting your best writing and your best life.Join the conversation about the fierce writing life at fierceonthepage.com.
The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers
Christopher Vogler - 1992
Provides new insights and observations from Vogler's pioneering work in mythic structure for writers.
The Author’s Checklist: An Agent’s Guide to Developing and Editing Your Manuscript
Elizabeth K. Kracht - 2020
Stealing Hollywood: Story Structure Secrets for Writing Your Best Book
Alexandra Sokoloff - 2015
Are you finally committed to writing that novel or screenplay, but have no idea how to get started? Or are you a published author, but know you need some plotting help to move your books and career up to that next level? You CAN write better books and scripts—by learning from the movies. Screenwriting is based on a simple (and powerful) structure that you already know from watching so many movies and television shows in your lifetime. And it's a structure that your reader or audience unconsciously expects, and that is crucial for you to deliver. In this workbook, award-winning author/screenwriter Alexandra Sokoloff shows you how to jump-start your plot and bring your characters and scenes vibrantly alive on the page by watching your favorite movies and learning from the storytelling structure and tricks of great filmmakers: • The High Concept Premise • The Three-Act, Eight-Sequence Structure • The Storyboard Grid • The Index Card Method of Plotting • The Setpiece Scene • Techniques of film pacing and suspense, character arc and drive, visual storytelling, and building image systems. Based on the internationally acclaimed Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshops and blog, this new e book edition uses an enhanced format and layout, incorporates all the basic information from the first Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbook and doubles the material, including ten full story breakdowns. Also available in PRINT --- the textbook-quality edition is 8 x 10 inches and lies open flat for easy highlighting and note-taking.