Its message is, simply put: you can do this, and it's worthwhile to try. Heather Sellers, who writes in multiple genres herself, has developed an approach that focuses on the habits and strategies that produce good writing in any genre. These habits and strategies make it possible for students to focus, to generate lots of writing, and to get to the good stuff -- the powerful imagery and the stories they really want to tell. She makes creative writing fun by providing opportunities to be playful and to experiment at the same time she teaches students the importance of discipline and craft.

    Complete with self-critique questions to help you assess your work, these exercises challenge you to experiment with the diverse writing styles as you clarify your own.Make the most of Josip Novakovich's insightful, mind-expanding workshop and come away with a stronger voice, a broader perspective and better fiction.

    Now this instant classic has been completely updated, outfitted with a whole new arsenal of indispensable knowledge on global affairs, popular culture, economic trends, scientific principles, and modern arts. Here's your chance to brush up on all those subjects you slept through in school, reacquaint yourself with all the facts you once knew (then promptly forgot), catch up on major developments in the world today, and become the Renaissance man or woman you always knew you could be! How do you tell the Balkans from the Caucasus? What's the difference between fission and fusion? Whigs and Tories? Shiites and Sunnis? Deduction and induction? Why aren't all Shakespearean comedies necessarily thigh-slappers? What are transcendental numbers and what are they good for? What really happened in Plato's cave? Is postmodernism dead or just having a bad hair day? And for extra credit, when should you use the adjective continual and when should you use continuous? An Incomplete Education answers these and thousands of other questions with incomparable wit, style, and clarity. American Studies, Art History, Economics, Film, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Science, and World History: Here's the bottom line on each of these major disciplines, distilled to its essence and served up with consummate flair.

    It is possible to develop significant skills in order to make the writing process much easier than you think. In "Research Strategies," author William Badke offers a clear, simple, and often humorous roadmap for conducting research and navigating the vast new world of information and technology. In this, the fourth edition, Badke details the entire research paper process from start to finish. "Research Strategies" provides a plethora of insightful and helpful information, including:Finding and narrowing a topic Creating an outline Searching databases Understanding metadata Using library catalogs and journal databases Conducting Internet research Organizing research notes Writing the actual paper"Research Strategies" explains the skills and strategies you need to efficiently and effectively complete a research project from topic to finished product. With the information provided here, research doesn't have to be frustrating or boring. Badke's strategies present a sure path through the amazing and complex new world of information.

    Instead, today's schools promote the false "gods" of economic utility, consumerism, or ethnic separatism and resentment. What alternative strategies can we use to instill our children with a sense of global citizenship, healthy intellectual skepticism, respect of America's traditions, and appreciation of its diversity? In answering this question, The End of Education restores meaning and common sense to the arena in which they are most urgently needed."Informal and clear...Postman's ideas about education are appealingly fresh."--New York Times Book Review

    Discover techniques and strategies for generating ideas, connecting with readers emotionally, and finding inspiration you need to finish your work. This fully revised edition includes an updated marketing section for navigating the unique challenges and possibilities of the evolving literary marketplace. Inside you'll find new essays from dozens of best-selling authors and publishing professionals detailing how to:—Master the elements of fiction, from plot and character to dialogue and point of view—Develop a unique voice and sensibility in your writing—Manage the practical aspects of writing, from overcoming writer's block to revising your work—Determine the key elements for success in every genre—Find an agent, market your work, and get published—or self-publish—successfullyYou'll also find interviews with some of the world's finest and most popular writers, including David Baldacci, Lee Child, Robert Crais, Khaled Hosseini, Hugh Howey, Stephen King, Dennis Lehane, George R.R. Martin, Jojo Moyes, Anne Rice, Jane Smiley, and Garth Stein. Their insights on the craft and business of fiction will provide you with invaluable mentorship as you embark on your writing journey.The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing is your go-to guide for every aspect of creating a bestseller.

    Using actual unfinished, "working" notes as examples, they illustrate options for composing, reviewing, and working fieldnotes into finished texts. They discuss different organizational and descriptive strategies, including evocation of sensory detail, synthesis of complete scenes, the value of partial versus omniscient perspectives, and of first person versus third person accounts. Of particular interest is the author's discussion of notetaking as a mindset. They show how transforming direct observations into vivid descriptions results not simply from good memory but more crucially from learning to envision scenes as written. A good ethnographer, they demonstrate, must learn to remember dialogue and movement like an actor, to see colors and shapes like a painter, and to sense moods and rhythms like a poet.The authors also emphasize the ethnographer's core interest in presenting the perceptions and meanings which the people studied attach to their own actions. They demonstrate the subtle ways that writers can make the voices of people heard in the texts they produce. Finally, they analyze the "processing" of fieldnotes—the practice of coding notes to identify themes and methods for selecting and weaving together fieldnote excerpts to write a polished ethnography.This book, however, is more than a "how-to" manual. The authors examine writing fieldnotes as an interactive and interpretive process in which the researcher's own commitments and relationships with those in the field inevitably shape the character and content of those fieldnotes. They explore the conscious and unconscious writing choices that produce fieldnote accounts. And they show how the character and content of these fieldnotes inevitably influence the arguments and analyses the ethnographer can make in the final ethnographic tale.This book shows that note-taking is a craft that can be taught. Along with Tales of the Field and George Marcus and Michael Fisher's Anthropology as Cultural Criticism, Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes is an essential tool for students and social scientists alike.

    With expanded coverage of ethics, analysis processes, and approaches, authors Catherine Marshall and Gretchen B. Rossman, have updated this highly popular text to reflect the advances and challenges presented by provocative developments and new applications since the previous edition.

    The book demonstrates what sharply rising standards for literacy have meant to successive generations of Americans and how--as students, workers, parents, and citizens--they have responded to rapid changes in the meaning and methods of literacy learning in their society. Drawing on more than 80 life histories of Americans from all walks of life, the book addresses critical questions facing public education at the start of the twenty-first century.

    The book has been stimulating creativity in millions of readers, translated into eleven languages, and used in seminars around the world.Now Roger von Oech's fully illustrated and updated volume is filled with even more provocative puzzles, anecdotes, exercises, metaphors, cartoons, questions, quotations, stories, and tips designed to systematically break through your mental blocks and unlock your mind for creative thinking. This new edition will attract an entire new generation of readers with updated and mind-stretching material.

    For eight editions, it has been known for its thorough coverage, student-friendly tone, model interior design, and abundant samples of the techniques and guidelines discussed throughout the book. As always, Mike Markel keeps pace with current technologies and the realities of technical communication today.

    Andrea Lunsford and John Ruszkiewicz’s instruction is engaging, informal, and jargon-free. Emphasizing inclusiveness, humor, and visual argument, it makes Everything’s an Argument student-centered and immediately accessible. Students like this book because it helps them understand how a world of argument already surrounds them; instructors like it because it helps students construct their own arguments about that world.

    His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively, and how to find a sense of purpose.Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to "practical" subjects like economics and computer science, students are losing the ability to think in innovative ways. Deresiewicz explains how college should be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success, so they can forge their own path. He addresses parents, students, educators, and anyone who's interested in the direction of American society, featuring quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and clearly presenting solutions.

    In the pages of The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Kooser brings those decades of experience to bear. Here are tools and insights, the instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poets—aspiring or practicing—can use to hone their craft, perhaps into art. Using examples from his own rich literary oeuvre and from the work of a number of successful contemporary poets, the author schools us in the critical relationship between poet and reader, which is fundamental to what Kooser believes is poetry’s ultimate purpose: to reach other people and touch their hearts. Much more than a guidebook to writing and revising poems, this manual has all the comforts and merits of a long and enlightening conversation with a wise and patient old friend—a friend who is willing to share everything he’s learned about the art he’s spent a lifetime learning to execute so well.

    In 1989, when Dr. Betty Edwards revised the book, it went straight to the Times list again. Now Dr. Edwards celebrates the twentieth anniversary of her classic book with a second revised edition.Over the last decade, Dr. Edwards has refined her material through teaching hundreds of workshops and seminars. Truly The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, this edition includes:the very latest developments in brain researchnew material on using drawing techniques in the corporate world and in educationinstruction on self-expression through drawingan updated section on using colordetailed information on using the five basic skills of drawing for problem solving