|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
Book Description
A collection of personal writing exercises and commentary from some of today's best novelists, short story writers, and writing teachers, including Jill McCorkle, Amy Bloom, Robert Olen Butler, Steve Almond, Jayne Anne Phillips, Virgil Suarez, Margot Livesay, and more.
What's the secret behind the successful and prolific careers of critically acclaimed novelists and short story writers Amy Bloom, Steve Almond, Jayne Anne Phillips, Alison Lurie, and others? Divine assistance? Otherworldly talent? An unsettlingly close relationship with the Muse? While the rest of us are staring at blank sheets of paper, struggling to come up with a first sentence, these writers are busy polishing off story after story and novel after novel. Despite producing work that may seem effortless, all of them have a simple technique for fending off writer's block: the writing exercise. In Now Write!, Sherry Ellis collects the personal writing exercises of today's best writers and lays bare the secret to their success.
- In "The Photograph," Jill McCorkle divulges one of her tactics for handling material that takes plots in a million different directions;
- National Book Award-nominee Amy Bloom offers "Water Buddies," an exercise for writers practicing their craft in workshops;
- Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal and Candyfreak, provides a way to avoiding purple prose in "The Five-Second Shortcut to Writing in the Lyric Register";
- and eighty-three more of the country's top writers disclose their strategies for creating memorable prose.
Complemented by brief commentary from the authors themselves, the exercises in Now Write! are practical and hands-on. By encouraging writers to shamelessly steal proven techniques that have yielded books which have won National Book Awards, Pulitzers, and Guggenheim grants, Now Write! inspires the aspiring writer to write now.
What's the secret behind the successful and prolific careers of critically acclaimed novelists and short story writers Amy Bloom, Steve Almond, Jayne Anne Phillips, Alison Lurie, and others? Divine assistance? Otherworldly talent? An unsettlingly close relationship with the Muse? While the rest of us are staring at blank sheets of paper, struggling to come up with a first sentence, these writers are busy polishing off story after story and novel after novel. Despite producing work that may seem effortless, all of them have a simple technique for fending off writer's block: the writing exercise. In Now Write!, Sherry Ellis collects the personal writing exercises of today's best writers and lays bare the secret to their success.
- In "The Photograph," Jill McCorkle divulges one of her tactics for handling material that takes plots in a million different directions;
- National Book Award-nominee Amy Bloom offers "Water Buddies," an exercise for writers practicing their craft in workshops;
- Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal and Candyfreak, provides a way to avoiding purple prose in "The Five-Second Shortcut to Writing in the Lyric Register";
- and eighty-three more of the country's top writers disclose their strategies for creating memorable prose.
Complemented by brief commentary from the authors themselves, the exercises in Now Write! are practical and hands-on. By encouraging writers to shamelessly steal proven techniques that have yielded books which have won National Book Awards, Pulitzers, and Guggenheim grants, Now Write! inspires the aspiring writer to write now.
About the Author
Sherry Ellis is the editor of NOW WRITE! Fiction Writing Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers and NOW WRITE! NONFICTION, as well as a personal writing coach. Her author interviews have appeared in the Kenyon Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, Glimmer Train, and AGNI, as well as other literary and arts magazines. She lives in Massachusetts.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Every writer should do exercises,
By Scipio Americanus "Bookman" (Bookland, North America) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Now Write!: Fiction Writing Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers (Paperback)
Ballet dancers exercise, so do gymnasts, magicians, violinists, and trapeze artists. In each of these performance arts there are STANDARD TECHNIQUES, which the artist must practice. Only writers seem to think it's all ineffable. One stares at the white page, and the muse appears-- or not. Well, no. There are standard techniques, and one should practice them. This book has a few. It is not by any means comprehensive, nor is it orderly or well organized, but it at least aims in the right direction. Beginning writers who do these exercises would inevitably fiind their work improving. What's missing is work on form-- standard forms that catch readers' attention-- and a discussion of what grabs human attention. For that, in essence, is the problem of ALL art: How to keep the paying bums in the paying seats? Once you keep them seated, you can feed them any content you want. But the main task is to keep the audience captivated. This is a function of the HOW, not the WHAT. Else political tracts would be considered art. This book goes a long way towards teaching some technical rudiments, though in episodic form. For more comprehensive treatments read Bickham's books (plot, and setting), or Chiarella's (Dialogue-- pure magic!), or Jessica Page Morell (Between the Lines). The last one in particular gets it almost entirely. Do all the exercises, then go write!
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews) 23 of 26 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Inconsistent, but not bad.,
By Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Now Write!: Fiction Writing Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers (Paperback)
Sherry Ellis (ed.), Now Write!: Fiction Exercises from Today's Best Teachers and Writers (Tarcher, 2006)Exactly what it says it is: a compendium of writing exercises from various folks. Ellis herself is entirely transparent aside from a brief introduction; from there, it's the writers and nothing but. Needless to say, in a book like this, especially with so many different contributors (there are eighty-two different sections), you're bound to have some inconsistency. As well, it sometimes seems as if there's just too much of a good thing; we go right from one exercise into the next, with only the barest separation into chapters designed to highlight different emphases in the exercises. I think most people will find a handful, or maybe a dozen, exercises they like and continually come back to those, rather than utilizing everything in the book. *** 17 of 20 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A How-to guide for writers,
By S. Ohalloran "S. O'Halloran" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Now Write!: Fiction Writing Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers (Paperback)
If you've ever struggled with different aspects of the writing craft, wondered how published authors have mstered the craft, been interested in going to writing workshops but lack the time or resources to attend, Ms. Ellis has made available a plethora of various writing exercises from published wirters that she has come to know through her own expereince at workshops and other contacts. Whether you are just strting to develop your writing voice or have been working at it for awhile this book will help you polish your skills, add new skills, provoke idease and stir the creative pot. A great teaching and learning book that guides you on the writing journey.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
a very helpful writing tool,
By Gordon Petry "Aspiring pianist" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Now Write!: Fiction Writing Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers (Paperback)
Now Write! Fiction Writing Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers lives up to its title. Some of the exercises were more attractive to me, especially Venise Berry's "Learning to Layer" which I presented to my English 101 classes. Different lessons will appeal to different writers, and what I am enthusiastic about today will change. This book is not one to sit and read through, but rather one to work your way through the exercises that sound as if they could help you with whatever problem is current.One problem that I had was that I got so engrossed that I was reading instead of writing. The exercises are all short, mostly three or four pages long. I plan to make better use of the book. The short biographies were interesting, especially the magazines that the writers had been published in. The book would be good for a class text or just for an individual looking to jump-start his or her writing. There are 85 exercises arranged in the usual categories plus one section on craft and another on revision |
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Reference > Publishing & Books > Authorship
- Books > Reference > Words & Language > Reference
- Books > Reference > Writing > Fiction
- Books > Reference > Writing > Writing Skills
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
