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.

    Includes detailed inside information on how to choose the right series to spec, how to pick the right story, and detailed, step by step instruction on how to write the scripts that will get you work.

    Copy veteran Constance Hale is on a mission to make creative communication, both the lyrical and the unlawful, an option for everyone.With its crisp, witty tone, Sin and Syntax covers grammar’s ground rules while revealing countless unconventional syntax secrets (such as how to use—Gasp!—interjections or when to pepper your prose with slang) that make for sinfully good writing. Discover how to:*Distinguish between words that are “pearls” and words that are “potatoes”* Avoid “couch potato thinking” and “commitment phobia” when choosing verbs* Use literary devices such as onomatopoeia, alliteration, and metaphor (and understand what you're doing)Everyone needs to know how to write stylish prose—students, professionals, and seasoned writers alike. Whether you’re writing to sell, shock, or just sing, Sin and Syntax is the guide you need to improve your command of the English language.

    Starting—and finishing—your novel has never been easier!First Draft in 30 Days provides you with a sure-fire system to reduce time-intensive rewrites and avoid writing detours. Award-winning author Karen S. Wiesner's 30-day method shows you how to create an outline so detailed and complete that it actually doubles as your first draft. Flexible and customizable, this revolutionary system can be modified to fit any writer's approach and style. Plus, comprehensive and interactive worksheets make the process seem less like work and more like a game. This invaluable resource also includes:-Itemized and flexible schedules to keep you focused each and every day-Dozens of detailed worksheets to guide you through the outlining process-Completed sample worksheets inspired by best-selling novels-Tips for outlining projects already in development-Brainstorming techniques to keep you motivated-Goal sheets for getting—and keeping—your career on trackMany aspiring and experienced novelists toss out hundreds of pages (and waste valuable time) before they have a workable first draft of a novel. You don't have to fall into this category anymore. With First Draft in 30 Days, you'll have the tools you need to write your masterpiece!

    Writing fiction is a similar process. Sometimes it might take a while before the story gets some balance and moves forward. Sometimes the story takes off as if motor-driven, then crashes into something not foreseen or expected. Learning to be a writer is all about finding your legs, and doing your best to convince onlookers that you know what you're doing and where you're going.In Pep Talks, Warnings & Screeds, acclaimed Southern story writer and novelist George Singleton serves up everything you ever need to know to become a real writer (meaning one who actually writes), in bite-sized aphorisms. It's Nietzsche's Beyond Good & Evil meets Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. It's cough syrup that tastes like chocolate cake. In other words, don't expect to get better unless you get a good dose of it, maybe two.Accompanied by more than fifty original full-color illustrations by novelist Daniel Wallace, these laugh-out-loud funny, candid, and surprisingly useful lessons will help you find your own writerly balance so you can continue to move forward.

    You can't eat artistic integrity. It tastes like sawdust.’ This gonzo guide is a lesson in the practicalities of writing: how to be productive, professional and maybe one day even pay the rent. Topics covered include ‘How to slay writer’s block’, ‘What the hell is workflow?’, ‘How to write 10,000 words in a day’ and ‘The best apps for writers’. How to Be a Writer is a kick-ass writing guide with a tough-love approach, written for the internet generation. John Birmingham is lauded as a prolific writer working across multiple genres. Here he shares his secrets. And some hard-core, real-world practical advice. And a few excellent descriptions of explosions.

    Build your brand. Change your life. Mastering Amazon Ads will let you reach your goals. You'll learn what it takes to understand how to manage your ad dollars to maximize your return-on-investment. Whether you're an Indie author self-publishing for the first time or an experienced author working on your book marketing skills, this book will help you build an advertising and marketing plan that will find readers and end up selling lots of books. Learn how to: - run ads - manage ads - analyze ads - optimize your description for improved conversions - build a long-term plan This book will give you the road map to success you need to quit your day job and get back to writing.

    Harry Evans has edited everything from the urgent files of battlefield reporters to the complex thought processes of Henry Kissinger. He's even been knighted for his services to journalism. In DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?, he brings his indispensable insight to us all in his definite guide to writing well.The right words are oxygen to our ideas, but the digital era, with all of its TTYL, LMK, and WTF, has been cutting off that oxygen flow. The compulsion to be precise has vanished from our culture, and in writing of every kind we see a trend towards more--more speed and more information but far less clarity. Evans provides practical examples of how editing and rewriting can make for better communication, even in the digital age. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR? is an essential text, and one that will provide every writer an editor at his shoulder.

    Although the rules of composition popularized in William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White's Elements of Style have been de rigueur for decades, they won't exactly set your writing free.To the rescue comes Spunk & Bite, a guide to bold and radiant language and style. The secret, according to bestselling author and former publishing executive Arthur Plotnik, is to embrace those qualities that composition rulebooks sidestep, among them, surprise, personality, engagement, edge, and fearlessness. Drawing on selections from today's most exciting writers: Jonathan Franzen, Sandra Cisneros, Bill Bryson, Maureen Dowd, and many dozens more.Plotnik reveals the tricks and techniques that make prose fresh, forceful, and publishable. For all types of writing: novels, articles, poems, ad copy, blogs, and even e-mails,this uncommon handbook reveals how to make your words so fetching that readers beg for more.

    With an introduction by Peter Straub.

    It’s the harmful debris of your education—a mixture of half-truths, myths, and false assumptions that prevents you from writing well. Drawing on years of experience as a writer and teacher of writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg offers an approach to writing that will change the way you work and think. There is no gospel, no orthodoxy, no dogma in this book. What you’ll find here isn’t the way to write. Instead, you’ll find a way to clear your mind of illusions about writing and discover how you write. Several Short Sentences About Writing is a book of first steps and experiments. They will revolutionize the way you think and perceive, and they will change forever the sense of your own authority as a writer. This is a book full of learning, but it’s also a book full of unlearning—a way to recover the vivid, rhythmic, poetic sense of language you once possessed. An indispensable and unique book that will give you a clear understanding of how to think about what you do when you write and how to improve the quality of your writing.

    Why? If a novel or short story has a bad beginning, then no one will keep reading. It's just that simple. Hooked provides readers with a detailed understanding of what a beginning must include (setup, backstory, the inciting incident, etc.); instruction on how to successfully develop the story problem; tips on how to correct common beginning mistakes; exclusive insider advice from agents, acquiring book editors, and literary journal editors; and much more.

    The whole process seems overwhelming. This conversational and action oriented book is for people who want to write a book (or are thinking about it), but for their whole life, have never been good at writing. Writing has always been difficult for you, and you think you could never enjoy it, much less write an entire book. Every time you start to write anything it’s like all of your ideas disappear. You know the drill. You get ready to do some writing. You’re pumped and think this will be the day all of your great ideas flood the page. Then ... You find yourself staring at a blank screen. You have no idea what you want to write about. After some time, you want to bang your head against the keyboard. You want to write a book. In fact, you know you have a book inside you but, you keep telling yourself: “I’m not a writer. I can’t write a book. I don’t have enough time anyway.” There are TONS of myths, misconceptions, and flat-out lies out there about how difficult it is to write your first book. How to Not SUCK at Writing Your First Book busts those myths and challenges everything you’ve been told about writing. This book is filled with proven solutions, options, and problem-solving methods that every first-time author needs to know—no matter what writing challenges you face. How to Not SUCK at Writing Your First Bookgives you the foundation for your first book through: 4 tried and true writing methods that make the writing process simple, easy & fast A writing method that involves 0 actual writing (your book can be done in as little as 7 hours) Simple strategies for preventing & defeating writer’s block Uncovering the #1 way to actually finish and publish your book (hint: is has nothing to do with writing) Shows you how simple and fast writing a book can actually be (by holding your hand every step of the way). Follow the advice given in this book and by the end, after putting what I have to say into action, you will have easily written a high-quality book. Best of all, the rest of your life doesn’t have to be put on hold to do it either! This book shows you how you can continue to spend most of your time doing what you love instead of struggling through something you hate. Before your buy the book, I have one question for you: What’s stopping you from turning your daily conversations and knowledge into a high-quality book faster than you ever thought possible? Scroll to the top and click the “buy now” button and you will write your first book-- and not suck at it.

    Where do these would-be novelists go wrong? Are the characters dull and cliched? Did the story arc collapse? Did they succumb to a dreaded bout of -writer's block-? Or maybe it was all just taking too long?These problems used to stop writers in their tracks, but nothing will get in your way after reading Write Your Novel in a Month. Author and instructor Jeff Gerke has created the perfect tool to show you how to prepare yourself to write your first draft in as little as 30 days. With Jeff's help, you will learn how to organize your ideas, create dynamic stories, develop believable characters, and flesh out the idea narrative for your novel--and not just for the rapid-fire first draft. Jeff walks you through the entire process, from initial idea to the important revision stage, and even explains what to do with your novel once you've finished.Whether you are participating in National Novel Writing Month or you're simply hoping to complete a draft over winter break or your vacation, this book covers the entire scope of writing a novel and lays out exactly what you need to know to get it done fast and right.

    The guide also includes a section on child personality types.