In You Are a Writer, Jeff Goins shares his own story of self-doubt and what it took for him to become a professional writer and best-selling author—and the principles he’s learned from seeing many others do the same. He gives you practical steps to improve your writing, get published, and build a platform that puts you in charge. This book is about what it takes to be a writer in the 21st Century. You will learn the importance of passion and discipline and how to show up every day to do the work. You Are a Writer will help you fall back in love with writing and build an audience who shares your love. It’s about living the dream of a life dedicated to words.

    Quincy Jones, Diane Keaton, Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, John Cleese and David Bowie are just a few of his celebrity alumni. Writers, producers, development executives and agents all flock to his lecture series, praising it as a mesmerizing and intense learning experience. In Story, McKee expands on the concepts he teaches in his $450 seminars (considered a must by industry insiders), providing readers with the most comprehensive, integrated explanation of the craft of writing for the screen. No one better understands how all the elements of a screenplay fit together, and no one is better qualified to explain the "magic" of story construction and the relationship between structure and character than Robert McKee.

     The time-tested secrets this book discloses include Cicero’s three-step strategy for moving an audience to action—as well as Honest Abe’s Shameless Trick of lowering an audience’s expectations by pretending to be unpolished. But it’s also replete with contemporary techniques such as politicians’ use of “code” language to appeal to specific groups and an eye-opening assortment of popular-culture dodges—including The Yoda Technique, The Belushi Paradigm, and The Eddie Haskell Ploy. Whether you’re an inveterate lover of language books or just want to win a lot more anger-free arguments on the page, at the podium, or over a beer, Thank You for Arguing is for you. Written by one of today’s most popular language mavens, it’s warm, witty, erudite, and truly enlightening. It not only teaches you how to recognize a paralipsis and a chiasmus when you hear them, but also how to wield such handy and persuasive weapons the next time you really, really want to get your own way.

    This is the book explaining how, with a few simple changes, I boosted my daily writing from 2000 words to over 10k a day, and how you can too."Expanding on her highly successful process for doubling daily word counts, this book, a combination of reworked blog posts and new material, offers practical writing advice for anyone who's ever longed to increase their daily writing output. In addition to updated information for Rachel's popular 2k to 10k writing efficiency process, 5 step plotting method, and easy editing tips, this new book includes chapters on creating characters that write their own stories, practical plot structure, and learning to love your daily writing. Full of easy to follow, practical advice from a commercial author who doesn't eat if she doesn't produce good books on a regular basis, 2k to 10k focuses not just on writing faster, but writing better, and having more fun while you do it.

    To join the elite ranks of those who write consistently, you need to learn how to stay prolific over the long term. And for that, the number one ingredient is self-discipline. In Self-Discipline for Writers, bestselling author Martin Meadows shares his philosophy and strategies on how to build self-discipline as a writer and how to keep writing over the long term. Here are some of the most important ideas you’ll discover: - 3 foundations of self-discipline for writers (avoid a common mistake that almost always leads to failure), - 3 steps to a strong work ethic as a writer (learn how to develop a strategy for consistently hitting your word counts), - 5 types of self-doubt common among writers and how to overcome them (if you don’t believe in yourself as a writer, how are your readers supposed to believe in you?), - 7 tips on how to manage your energy as a writer—including not only the most fundamental advice, but also intricacies like discussing your projects with other people, capturing fleeting ideas, and reading your reviews (learn why optimizing your energy is key to consistent results), - why control is essential for any writer (and how to claim it), - 5 good business practices for more self-discipline (this includes some surprising thoughts on how to run your writing business to reduce frustration and increase productivity). Writing doesn’t have to be burdensome. You too can write with more ease, and most importantly, write and publish consistently so that you can enjoy a flourishing writing career. Let’s learn together how to accomplish this exciting goal.

    This is an essential book for everyone who wants to write clearly about any subject and use writing as a means of learning.

    Imperative reading for all teachers and students of writing.”—ChoiceThis humorous and accessible classic on style calls for the return of wordplay and delight to writing instruction. Richard Lanham argues that many tomes on writing, with their trio of platitudes—clarity, plainness, sincerity—lie “upon the spirit like wet cardboard.”"People seldom write to be clear. They have designs on their fellow men. Pure prose is as rare as pure virtue, and for the same reasons…The Books [Lanham’s term for misguided composition textbooks], written for a man and world yet unfallen, depict a ludicrous process like this: 'I have an idea. I want to present this gift to my fellow man. I fix this thought clearly in mind. I follow the rules. Out comes a prose that gift-wraps thought in transparent paper.' If this sounds like a travesty, it’s because it is one. Yet it dominates prose instruction in America."—from Chapter 1Richard A. Lanham is professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, and president of Rhetorica, Inc., a consulting and editorial services company. He is the author of numerous books on writing, including A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, Analyzing Prose, The Electronic Word, and most recently, The Economics of Attention.

    Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart - to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail. And, most important, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted.

    By integrating Plot Twists, Plot Reversals, and Moments of Heightened Danger (TRDs) at crucial points, you can captivate your readers with I-can't-wait-to-see-what-happens-next intrigue. The quicker pace and focused action that comes from strategically placed twists form the core of the nuanced, multifaceted books that sell--and that help you find a devoted readership. In Mastering Plot Twists, Agatha Award-winning author, Jane K. Cleland goes beyond telling writers what to do; she shows you how to do it. Within these pages, you'll find:A proven, five-step process for using TRDs, with detailed examples from best-selling booksA deep dive into plotting, structure, pacing, subplots, and more to help you develop surprising yet inevitable twists."Jane's Plotting Roadmap" and worksheets--essential tools for planning your plotBuilding on the award-winning instruction provided in Mastering Suspense, Structure & Plot, Cleland's newest guide will help you create effective and credible twists, creating the kind of stories that will keep your readers up long into the night. ..".A master class in crafting plots that twist and turn..." Hallie Ephron, New York Times best-selling author of You'll Never Know, Dear

    Here at last is a book by two professional editors to teach writers the techniques of the editing trade that turn promising manuscripts into published novels and short stories.In this completely revised and updated second edition, Renni Browne and Dave King teach you, the writer, how to apply the editing techniques they have developed to your own work. Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manuscript. Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited.

    Those cartoons eventually led to a popular blog-gapingvoid.com-and a reputation for pithy insight and humor, in both words and pictures.MacLeod has opinions on everything from marketing to the meaning of life, but one of his main subjects is creativity. How do new ideas emerge in a cynical, risk-averse world? Where does inspiration come from? What does it take to make a living as a creative person?Ignore Everybody expands on MacLeod's sharpest insights, wittiest cartoons, and most useful advice. For example:-Selling out is harder than it looks. Diluting your product to make it more commercial will just make people like it less.-If your plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail. Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.-Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether. There's no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.-The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours. The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will.After learning MacLeod's forty keys to creativity, you will be ready to unlock your own brilliance and unleash it on the world.

     Jammed with sage advice, genuine encouragement, and surprising examples of how to write and how not to write, this book gives beginning writers and confident students alike an easy-to-follow roadmap for improving one of the most important skills for success. En route to Sin Boldly!-induced, A+ paper bliss, readers encounter such topics as:Choosing a Topic and Telling Your Story ("K.I.S.S.-Keep It Simple, Stupid")Literary Games (featuring "Francobabble for Freshman")Choosing a Voice ("Dissing the Prof")Grammatical Horrors ("A does not equal they")Common Mistakes ("Hopefully and Other Controversies") Fully revised and updated with new examples, quizzes, and tips, Sin Boldly! is not only a comprehensive guide, but also a fantastic, fun read for anyone who wants to write clearly and effectively.

    These steps will show you: the myths about writing that make us feel like we're not "good enough" to be an author, how to develop the good writing routines and a solid timeline, how to write a first draft and revise the draft, how to bring in beta readers and incorporate their feedback, and finally, how to pull it all together into a finished manuscript. When we're writing a book, we need inspiration, and we need the "how-to" pieces that we were never taught in school. Start Writing Your Book Today provides both. Over the last 10 years as a writing coach, Morgan has developed a blend of mindset and mechanics to help authors through feeling stuck and into power writing through their books. In this book, Morgan shares her methods with you, so that you can step up and become the writer you know you're meant to be.Each step of how to write your book is laid out for you. No more excuses. You'll be ready to finally start writing your book.

    Coverage includes writing college-level essays, source-based arguments, and research papers; thinking and reading critically; using documentation style correctly; designing documents; writing for the Web; writing about literature; writing for business; creating oral presentations; taking essay tests; and using correct grammar, punctuation, and mechanics correctly. Anyone looking to succeed and fulfill their potential in writing.

    Equally at home discussing Charles Dickens and Charlie Chaplin, he moved back and forth across the porous borders between essay and journalism, high art and low. A frequent commentator on literature, language, film, and drama throughout his career, Orwell turned increasingly to the critical essay in the 1940s, when his most important experiences were behind him and some of his most incisive writing lay ahead. All Art Is Propaganda follows Orwell as he demonstrates in piece after piece how intent analysis of a work or body of work gives rise to trenchant aesthetic and philosophical commentary."how to be interesting, line after line."Contents:Charles DickensBoys' WeekliesInside the WhaleDrama Reviews: The Tempest, The Peaceful InnFilm Review: The Great DictatorWells, Hitler and the World StateThe Art of Donald McGillNo, Not OneRudyard KiplingT.S. EliotCan Socialists Be Happy?Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador DaliPropaganda and Demotic SpeechRaffles and Miss BlandishGood Bad BooksThe Prevention of LiteraturePolitics and the English LanguageConfessions of a Book ReviewerPolitics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's TravelsLear, Tolstoy and the FoolWriters and LeviathanReview of The Heart of the Matter by Graham GreeneReflections on Gandhi