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.

    This amazing organ has unique powers to make predictions about the future, form relationships with other people, adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, and so much more. We all have a basic conception of how our brains function, but when did you last dive into the fascinating world of neuroscience to truly understand the inner workings of your mind? For decades, the field of neuroscience has been in a near-constant state of disruptive transformation, as we continually learn more about our incredible brains. Thanks to rapid advances in technology and in our understanding of the brain, today’s neuroscience research goes far beyond trying to understand how the brain works, and into the search for proven ways to optimize brain performance. In Your Best Brain, Professor John J. Medina - an award-winning scientist, New York Times best-selling author, and leading advocate for brain research - delivers 24 exciting lectures that probe the origins of consciousness, memory, emotion, attention, intelligence, and beyond. He focuses on five key areas of study in neuroscience: the brain’s physical structure and function, and how it enabled us to become the planet’s apex predator; the ways in which the brain processes information, and how that relates to intelligence; the intricacies of emotions and socialization, and how empathy is a vital survival mechanism; how our brains develop and change throughout our lifetimes; and how we can best use and expand our cerebral processing performance. After gaining a thorough understanding of the science behind your best brain, you’ll learn scientifically proven methods for improving your memory, boosting your creativity, and keeping your mind sharp for years to come.

    In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

    They affect how we grant legitimacy to authority, define what is possible, create standards of right and wrong, and even view the potential of human life. Between 1600 and 1800, such a revolution of the intellect seized Europe, shaking the minds of the continent as few things before or since. What we now know as the Enlightenment challenged previously accepted ways of understanding reality, bringing about modern science, representative democracy, and a wave of wars, sparking what Professor Kors calls, "perhaps the most profound transformation of European, if not human, life."In this series of 24 insightful lectures, you'll explore the astonishing conceptual and cultural revolution of the Enlightenment. You'll witness in its tumultuous history the birth of modern thought in the dilemmas, debates, and extraordinary works of the 17th and 18th-century mind, as wielded by the likes of thinkers like Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, Newton, Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau.And you'll understand why educated Europeans came to believe that they had a new understanding - of thought and the human mind, of method, of nature, and of the uses of knowledge - with which they could come to know the world correctly for the first time in human history, and with which they could rewrite the possibilities of human life.Disclaimer: Please note that this recording may include references to supplemental texts or print references that are not essential to the program and not supplied with your purchase.

    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.

    Our language even has a word—Machiavellian—that encapsulates the images those responses conjure up: An indistinct figure quietly making his way through the darkest corridors of power, hatching plots to play one rival against another A cold-blooded political liar, ready to justify any duplicity undertaken in the name of a noble end that will ultimately justify the most malignant means A coolly practical leader—amoral at best—willing to do whatever is necessary in a world governed not by ideas of right or wrong, but by solutions dictated by realpolitik.But does the Machiavelli most of us think we know bear any resemblance to the Machiavelli who lived, pondered, and wrote?According to Professor William R. Cook, a reading of Machiavelli that considers only those qualities that we today call "Machiavellian" is incomplete, and Machiavelli himself "certainly would not recognize" such sinister interpretations or caricatures of his writings and beliefs. Indeed, The Prince—on the pages of which so much of this image was built—was not even published in his lifetime.In the 24 lectures that make up Machiavelli in Context, Professor Cook offers the opportunity to meet an extraordinarily thoughtful and sincere student of history and its lessons, and to learn that there is far more to him than can be gleaned from any reading of The Prince, no matter how thorough.Although The Prince is the work by which most of us think we know Machiavelli, and although some have indeed called it the first and most important book of political science ever written, it was not, according to Professor Cook, either Machiavelli's most important work or the one most representative of his beliefs. Those distinctions belong, instead, to his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, a longer work started at about the same time and which would, like The Prince, not be published until well after his death."Everyone who has seriously studied the works of Machiavelli agrees that he ... believed in the superiority of a republican form of government, defined as a mixed constitution with elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy."Once we recover the context of the writing of The Prince, and analyze it along with the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, it will be clear how The Prince can be read as a book designed to guide leaders in the creation—for Machiavelli, restoration—of republican government in Italy."Ultimately, Machiavelli's goal wasn't much different from ours. It was to live in a free and equal participatory society, because he believed that was the greatest way in which human beings could live and flourish."In fact, says Professor Cook, "Machiavelli's republican thought influenced the development of institutions and values both in Europe and in America."To present a complete and well-rounded picture of Machiavelli's ideas on how human societies should be organized and governed, Professor Cook sets aside much of Machiavelli's written output—which included the political work The Art of War, a biography, many letters, and even some plays—to focus on The Prince, the Discourses, and, more briefly, his Florentine Histories.In doing so, Professor Cook draws on the same qualities so evident in his previous courses for The Teaching Company: Tocqueville and the American Experience, Dante's Divine Comedy, Francis of Assisi, and St. Augustine's Confessions.Teaching in the relaxed and informal style of those courses, Professor Cook moves easily among the different disciplines so pertinent to an understanding of Machiavelli's ideas, including history, philosophy, government, and the elements of leadership. He is unfailingly clear, always provides any definitions needed to understand the material at hand, and is always ready with a touch of wit whenever that is appropriate.Because so much of our contemporary misunderstanding of Machiavelli's ideas comes from a lack of context, Professor Cook carefully sets the stage for a complete perspective of Machiavelli's world.Long before he turns to the works themselves, you'll have learned about Florence and its political history, both before and during Machiavelli's lifetime; the developing Renaissance culture of Machiavelli's time, especially as it bears on the use of ancient political thought by writers and political leaders; and Machiavelli's own life story, including his education, service to the Florentine Republic, years spent in exile south of Florence, and the ways each period of his life affected his writings.The result is a thorough grounding in the information one needs to understand and appreciate this stunningly original thinker.You'll learn, for example, what Machiavelli means when he discusses the important ideas of virtù and Fortuna.Though these are today invariably translated as virtue and fortune, Machiavelli's meanings can involve much more. Though he sometimes uses virtù in the sense we would understand today, he often uses the word—which comes from the classical Latin word for Man—as a means of describing the way one practices successful statecraft: aggressively, with no reluctance to use lies, deceit, and cruelty that may be required to maintain power, and hence the stability the people deserve.In a similar way Machiavelli uses Fortuna in a different sense than might have been used by, say, Dante when he describes the vagaries of fate over which we have no control.Instead, Machiavelli uses the adage, "Fortune is like a river." Though we cannot control fortune, which may well choose to make the river flood, a good ruler, practicing virtù, can indeed prepare for it, and thus modify its effects.You'll see how Machiavelli first became exposed to history and one of its earliest great practitioners—the Roman historian, Livy—through his own experience of Fortuna.Though printed books such as Livy's Early History of Rome were too expensive for a family like the young Machiavelli's in the 15th century, his father did own a copy. He had written the index, and a copy of the book had been part of his payment. Thus Machiavelli grew up with the volumes about which he would one day write his own most important work, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy.You'll be introduced to Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI and the man regarded as Machiavelli's model for The Prince, especially in the way his actions embodied the virtù so important to Machiavelli.Professor Cook brings this out in a shocking story of Borgia's use of a tough and merciless Spaniard—Ramiro d'Orco—to impose order and stability on the area of north central Italy known as the Romagna that had come under Borgia's rule and was beset by crime and violence.D'Orco's brutal methods had the desired effect. And when the job was completed, the local people emerged from their homes one morning to find the two halves of Ramiro d'Orco's body on opposite sides of the town square of Cesana, because d'Orco had been too tough, and Cesare Borgia needed a way to advertise further his concern for the people whose loyalty he wanted.The story also embodies, for Machiavelli, the idea that cruelty can be "well-used," just as being merciful—withholding such cruelty when a leader deems it needed—may be less than merciful in its long-term impact.Finally, you will get to see, throughout these lectures, the development of Machiavelli's reliance on history for its lessons, his role as a Renaissance Humanist thinker, and the emergence of his republican views, which still have tremendous influence today as we ask how republics start, grow, succeed, or fail.As Professor Cook notes, we are not going to agree with all of Machiavelli's answers. But his commitment to asking the right questions—to thinking, reflecting, and learning everything history has to teach us about the best ways to govern and safeguard the future—was total.

    His language and culture - those of Elizabethan England - are greatly different from our own, and his poetry, thick with metaphorical imagery and double meanings, can be hard to penetrate.Yet the keys to understanding Shakespeare are written into the plays themselves. If you can learn to recognize the playwright's own clues, you'll become able to engage meaningfully with his language, to follow the plot structures and themes that drive his plays, and to track the development of his characters.Over the course of 24 lectures, this innovative and penetrating exploration of Shakespeare's plays reveals how to enter Shakespeare's dramatic world, how to grasp what's happening in any of his plays, and how to enjoy them fully both on the page and the stage.Under Professor Conner's expert guidance, shaped by decades of studying and performing Shakespeare, you learn more than 40 interpretive tools, drawn from the texts themselves, that give you direct insight into the plays. These guiding principles allow you to follow the narratives of the plays as they unfold, with a clear understanding of how the plays function and fit together.The professor also reveals fascinating details of Shakespeare's era, which shed further light on the plays and the way his contemporary audiences perceived them.This course builds the skills that allow you to reach your own understanding of the plays - to deeply comprehend Shakespeare's transcendent poetic language, the spellbinding world of his great characters and stories, and his revelatory reflections on human experience.Disclaimer: Please note that this recording may include references to supplemental texts or print references that are not essential to the program and not supplied with your purchase.©2013 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2013 The Great Courses

    She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well.For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning graduate teaching prizes for her highly selective seminar at Syracuse, where she mentored such future hit authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas. In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and “black belt sinner,” providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre.Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers’ experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr’s own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told— and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate.Joining such classics as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today’s most popular literary forms—a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft.

    And your life is literally shaped by it.Many of the decisions you make are decided by talking. You may be in a restaurant asking a waiter for an unusual substitution, urging a service manager to get your car finished sooner rather than later, or trying to sway your significant other toward a particular film or show. Or you might be trying to build more cooperative relationships at the office.No matter why you engage in face-to-face talk, though, there's no way to insulate yourself from the dangers of miscommunication. Your ability to use the art of talk to effectively convey who you are and to build solid relationships not only influences the success of your friendships, romantic life, and everyday encounters, but also how you experience your workplace. Studies show that using conversational skills properly in that arena makes you more productive, happier, and less stressed.But the truth is that most of us don't understand nearly as well as we could how conversation really works, whether in the office or out of it, with both parties often having entirely different perceptions of what the words and gestures passing back and forth are meant to convey. Even more important, most of us aren't as successful as we could be in making those conversations work better for us. Even when we're more skilled at it than the average person, we often give up the opportunity to be even better, leaving a lot of potential success and happiness on the table.Effective Communication Skills is your chance to learn more about how you communicate verbally, the common problems you can encounter in doing so, and how you can improve your own effectiveness—especially by overcoming the psychological and biological hard-wiring that too often gets in the way.In 24 mind-opening lectures, Professor Dalton Kehoe of Canada's York University brings more than four decades of experience as an award-winning teacher, author, and successful business consultant to this exploration of what's really going in any conversation you take part in.

    The issues Professor Dalton addresses in these lectures - and in Western political theory generally - fall into three sets of fundamental questions you'll get to unpack. The first set involves the essential characteristics of human nature and the good society. The second focuses on the intricate relationship between the individual and society. And the final set of questions involves theories about change.Through these lectures and their historical case studies, you'll be able to identify the fundamental questions and concerns that shape classical and modern political theory:Describe the influence of one's understanding of human nature upon one's vision of the good society.Compare and contrast the views of theorists regarding the purpose of the state, the relationship between politics and ethics, and the qualifications for exercising political power.Discuss views of leading political theorists regarding the meaning of freedom, the sources of legitimate political authority, and the obligations of individuals to the state or society, and more.

    And it has an undeniable power to move us in ways that enrich our lives - provided it is understood.If you have ever longed to appreciate great concert music, to learn its glorious language and share in its sublime pleasures, the way is now open to you, through this series of 48 wonderful lectures designed to make music accessible to everyone who yearns to know it, regardless of prior training or knowledge. It's a lecture series that will enable you to first grasp music's forms, techniques, and terms - the grammatical elements that make you fluent in its language - and then use that newfound fluency to finally hear and understand what the greatest composers in history are actually saying to us.And as you learn the gifts given us by nearly every major composer, you'll come to know there is one we share with each of them - a common humanity that lets us finally understand that these were simply people speaking to us, sharing their passion and wanting desperately to be heard. Using digitally recorded musical passages to illustrate his points, Professor Greenberg will take you inside magnificent compositions by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Verdi, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and more. Even if you have listened to many of these illustrative pieces throughout your life - as so many of us have - you will never hear them the same way again after experiencing these lectures.

    A series of 24 Lectures on the New England Transcendalist Movement delivered by Ashton Nichols, Professor of English at Dickinson College.

     Great writing begins with the sentence. Whether it’s two words (“Jesus wept.”) or William Faulkner’s 1,287-word sentence in Absalom! Absalom!, sentences have the power to captivate, entertain, motivate, educate, and, most importantly, delight. Yet, the sentence-oriented approach to writing is too often overlooked in favor of bland economy. Building Great Sentences teaches you to write better sentences by luxuriating in the pleasures of language. Award-winning Professor Brooks Landon draws on examples from masters of long, elegant sentences—including Don DeLillo, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, and Samuel Johnson—to reveal the mechanics of how language works on thoughts and emotions, providing the tools to write powerful, more effective sentences.

    Unlike a novel, history book, or scientific publication, essays provide you with the versatility to express all the various facets that make you you. The concise and direct nature of an essay means that you may tap into your sense of wit, share your individual point of view, persuade others to your perspective, and record a part of your memories for future generations in as many distinct essay forms as you wish.Hide Full DescriptionDiscover the keys to unlocking your potential in essay writing with Becoming a Great Essayist. These 24 illuminating lectures explore numerous genres or types of essays, challenge you with stimulating writing prompts, and provide insights into how to get to know yourself like never before so that you may write honest, compelling, and GREAT essays. And because essays are so flexible in their style and function, the skills you build writing great essays may be applied to almost all other forms of writing.Dr. Jennifer Cognard-Black, Professor of English at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, is your expert guide. Professor Cognard-Black—who is an award-winning author, a 2012 Fulbright Scholar, and a former student of the renowned author Jane Smiley—has an intimate, honest, and direct approach. She teaches you that the versatility and expressiveness of the essay make it an ideal medium for crafting stories and drawing perspectives out of even the most reluctant writers. As Professor Cognard-Black notes, “The essay has no fixed parameters apart from including a first-person narrator who is intent on telling the truth. An essay’s form and style is entirely dependent upon your purpose—and your audience. You get to create a new form, and adopt a new style, with each essay that you write.… Essays explore. Essays imagine. Essays digress. Their structures don’t have to have fixed rules.” The goal of a great essay is to connect a personal experience, an idea, or a memory to the world outside of yourself—and the first step is to look deep within your memories, knowledge, and opinions to find that experience. When mastered, the ability to write a great essay provides a solid foundation that allows you to move into other forms of writing with both confidence and skill.The first step in your journey with Professor Cognard-Black is to redefine what the essay means. For many, the word “essay” brings flashbacks of the schoolroom. Whether you were the kind of student who couldn’t wait to get started or one who faced each writing assignment with a feeling of dread, this course will change how you think about and approach the essay. From the very first lecture, you’ll see how the five-paragraph essay you might remember is vastly different from the master-level essays you’ll review, analyze, and learn to create. You’ll get instrumental insight into what makes an essay great; learn how to work your own stories, perspectives, and memories into a compelling piece; and investigate what to do once you’ve crafted an essay that you want to share.Essay Types: From Personal to PublicSince the 16th century, essays have served as a means of connection: a way to persuade others to a certain perspective, a medium to tell a story, and a written record of individual and national histories. The word “essay” comes from the French essai, meaning an attempt or a trial, which speaks to the flexibility of the form in both delivery and outcomes. The essay itself is a thought experiment which can employ a variety of lengths, styles, and genres, including political, personal, humorous, and historical approaches. Further, a well-written essay may evoke an assortment of emotions or reactions. These works, often short yet profoundly poignant, have the power to make readers laugh, cry, think, or change their opinions or actions. Even the delivery platforms are versatile—essays are published in journals and newspapers, anthologies and collections, blogs and web pages, and more.When it comes to crafting a great piece of writing, Professor Cognard-Black begins with well-established principles derived from Aristotle, who believed that writers are most convincing when they create a strong ethos (or credibility), and then support this ethos with appeals to reason (logos) and emotion (pathos). Similar rhetorical strategies are still utilized today in creating compelling stories and arguments. Most importantly, essays use a convincing and honest first-person voice because the writer has a deep connection to the material that comes from living, witnessing, or caring profoundly about an experience. By merging what Aristotle calls the artistic proofs (the pathos of the essay, or the personal experience and thoughts, and the logos of the essay, or rationality) with the inartistic proofs (or research and data), your essay will come across as credible even to skeptical readers.Over these 24 enlightening lectures, you’ll delve into the various genres of the essay.Epistolary essays originated in the politics, philosophy, and theology of Greco-Roman rhetoricians. Letters or “epistles” are unlike any other means of communication, which is exactly what draws essay writers to them. Epistolary essays adopt elements that define the genre of the letter—its intimacy, immediacy, and materiality.Polemical essays are essays that strongly support one side of an argument.Historical essays draw from historical artifacts and scholars, as well as a writer’s ideas within her or his own historical moment.Humorous essays, more often than not, focus on a predicament or a situation where something goes wrong. As Aristotle noted, laughing at tragedy may be cathartic for the writer and the audience.Memoirs recall and meditate on the writer’s past, using that contemplation for self-reflection. A memoir essay must evolve from a writer’s intimate recollections of the past brought together with thoughtful reflections on those memories.And because understanding what makes a great essay requires that you read great essayists, this course also contains a treasure trove of selections from famous and lesser-known writers. You’ll be introduced to some of the greatest essayists of the ages who have pushed the limits of how essays are defined, including:Michel de Montaigne, whose 1580 collection Les Essais established the essay as a literary genreJoseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, 18th-century British wits and protégées of Montaigne, who circulated their essays about manners and society in highly popular and somewhat scandalous periodicalsRalph Waldo Emerson, an American philosopher-poet, who wrote some of the first essays on nature and the environmentRainer Maria Rilke, an Austrian poet, who created intimate essays through personal letters, often on the topic of what it means to be an artistVirginia Woolf, an author who is widely considered one of the finest essayists of the 20th century, who wrote episodic pieces which have a dreamlike qualityMary McCarthy, an American author, critic, and political activist, who used essays to articulate sharply observant and often self-scrutinizing pointsYou’ll also sample contemporary essayists hailing from diverse backgrounds, such as Naomi Shihab Nye, Annie Dillard, Joan Didion, Barbara Kingsolver, David Sedaris, and Maya Angelou. In addition, you’ll have the unique opportunity to dig into the process of essay writing by looking at drafts of works in progress, including some from Professor Cognard-Black’s own students. Finally, each chapter will give you a chance to put into practice everything you’ve just learned.The Right and Wrong Ways to WriteAs you attempt to start writing your own essay, looking at a blank computer screen or piece of paper might be daunting. Professor Cognard-Black invites you to overcome this common stumbling block by considering that, unlike other forms of writing that are often strictly plotted or outlined, essays create their own forms as they go along. Aristotle called this process inventio or invention. This method means that you explore what the essay wants to say as you draft your piece. Rather than focusing on how precisely you want to form your thoughts into a specific structure on the page, you get to discover what happens as you get the raw material down—and this explosion of ideas and words becomes your first draft. As Professor Cognard-Black puts it, “The purpose of invention—of that first attempt to get your thoughts down on paper and give them a shape—is to explore and to discover what your essay wants to be about.”The process of invention is specific to each writer, and so with each essay, there’s a certain version of truth or memory that is created. But striving for the truth is essential. Sometimes that truth will reveal flaws in a precious idea or shine a light on the imperfect sides of humanity—people you know, people you care about, even members of your own family—but maintaining the intention of honesty will help you create and sustain a strong ethos or credibility. Keep in mind that your truth is only one version of events; each situation you write about contains many possible truths.Once the central purpose of each essay you write is clear, you then need a sense of direction as you revise. Opening sentences that preview the place, people, perspective, and purpose of your essays give your reader an invitation to join you on a journey into your chosen subject.While the essay is a very flexible form, there are mistakes that will weaken your writing, which Professor Cognard-Black explains in depth. Known to rhetorical theorists as logical fallacies, these potential pitfalls are easy to fall into and will ruin your essay’s credibility. They include:Faulty generalizations: when a writer makes a sweeping comment, reaches a decision based on too little evidence, or makes claims that are impossible to validateAd hominem arguments: its literal translation meaning “against the man,” this fallacy occurs when a writer attacks a person, rather than the idea under discussion, and occurs often in American popular culture and politicsAppeals to bandwagonism: when a writer attempts to win readers over to a specific opinion by claiming that it’s the most popular positionAnother factor to consider is the length of your essay. While essays don’t necessarily have length requirements, they do tend to cut to the chase. To keep your writing concise, clear, and to the point, Professor Cognard-Black recommends cutting everything you’ve written in half between the first and second draft. If your essay is 6,000 words, cut it to 3,000. Don’t discard the excess copy, but do revisit your edited version after a few days. You may be surprised at how often you don’t need that extra text.As you examine many types of essays, build a toolbox of abilities to help you polish and perfect your writing, and analyze samples of masterfully composed essays, you’ll find yourself exploring your own memories, opinions and stories in an entirely new way. The essay is, above all else, one of the most profoundly personal outlets for writing.While the goal of this course is to provide you with fundamental abilities that will improve your essays, the skills you will learn also provide a foundation to develop any writing project you undertake. Becoming a Great Essayist is an unrivalled opportunity to advance your critical and creative thinking skills, enhance your ability to master a strong and persuasive style, and most importantly, allow you to get to know your own inner voice.

    Scott Fitzgerald, was lured by the promise of Hollywood glamour to try his hand at screenwriting. He failed. His misadventure became a cautionary tale for aspiring screenwriters for decades. Meanwhile, Oscar-nominated scriptwriter John Milius, who penned the script for Apocalypse Now, once said that his job was “hackwork.” So which is it? Is writing for the screen a glamorous vocation or formulaic drudgery? Is it a difficult undertaking that can sink a great novelist at the height of his career, or simply another boring day job that requires minimal skill?