Showing titles in Writing & Publishing

Rick Bragg closes his circle of family stories with an unforgettable tale about fathers and sons inspired by his own relationship with his 10-year-old stepson.

From one of the world’s most celebrated humor writers, this easy-to-follow, step-by-step book lays out a clear system for producing living, breathing comedy characters that audiences will fall in love with.

Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of literary strategies that also brings high spirits and wit to its original conclusions. It is a liberating manifesto that says, Let's leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation. It will appeal to serious readers and writers alike.

Ready to take your story's character arcs and themes to the next level? This latest book from veteran writing teacher and story theorist K.M. Weiland ventures far beyond the popular and pervasive Hero's Journey to explore six important archetypal character arcs, representing key moments of initiation in the human experience.

As practical as it is inspiring, The Art of Creative Writing remains a timeless, illuminating guide that teaches every writer, and aspiring writer, how to create works that are both compelling and enduring.

When you think of unforgettable characters from books you’ve read, who comes to mind? James Bond, Harry Potter, Scarlett O’Hara, Elizabeth Bennett, Atticus Finch, Sherlock Holmes? These are just some of the most iconic characters in fiction. They are so memorable that even decades or centuries later, they still captivate our imagination. But what exactly is it about them that keeps generations so invested in them? Writers apply certain rules and tricks with their characters to make their stories shine. With this guide, you’ll find out exactly what they are.

Over a decade ago, when Writing Down the Bones first appeared, Natalie Goldberg started a revolution in the way we practice writing. Now, for the first time, Goldberg reads her classic work, while offering new commentary about the creative, spiritual, and practical dimensions of writing. This collector's edition also includes an exclusive interview with the author.

Sell your tech (without getting technical). B2B tech marketing is confusing buyers with technical jargon and drowning them in meaningless buzzwords that leave them overwhelmed (and not all that interested in buying). When everyone’s using the same tired lingo, how do you cut through the noise and show buyers your value? You get punchy. In Make It Punchy, tech messaging expert Emma Stratton explains how and why you need to leave all the jargon behind. How to get real with buyers about why your technology matters to them.

With consummate craftsmanship, Mary Oliver has fashioned fifteen luminous prose pieces: on nature, writing, and herself and those around her. She praises Whitman, denounces cuteness, notes where to find the extraordinary, and extols solitude. Nature speaks to her and she speaks to nature.

All academics need to write, but many struggle to finish their dissertations, articles, books, or grant proposals. Writing is hard work and can be difficult to wedge into a frenetic academic schedule. How can we write it all while still having a life? In this second edition of his popular guidebook, Paul Silvia offers fresh advice to help you overcome barriers to writing and use your time more productively.

There are only, in my humble opinion, two kinds of readers: readers who love your books and readers who don’t know they love your books yet. But how do you reach those readers in the second category, no matter what kind of writer you are? The answer to that question is...universal fantasy. Universal fantasy is why my sales tripled when I “accidentally” wrote three books that landed in the Amazon Top 100. Universal fantasy is why some authors get gobs of gushing reviews and some authors who write “way better” get crickets.

Expanding on the author's highly successful process for doubling daily word counts, this audiobook - 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.

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb outside government buildings in central Oslo, killing eight people. He then proceeded to a youth camp on the island of Utøya, where he killed 69 more, most of them teenage members of Norway's governing Labour Party. In One of Us, the journalist Åsne Seierstad tells the story of this terrible day and what led up to it. What made Breivik, a gifted child from an affluent neighborhood in Oslo, become a terrorist?

Ranging widely from Homer to David Foster Wallace, from What Maisie Knew to Make Way for Ducklings, Wood takes the reader through the basic elements of the art, step by step. He sums up two decades of insight with wit and concision, resulting in nothing less than a philosophy of the novel, which has won critical acclaim nationwide, from the San Francisco Chronicle to the New York Times Book Review.

A Lie Too Big to Fail asserts the idea that a government can never investigate itself in a crime of this magnitude. Was the convicted Sirhan Sirhan a willing participant? Or was he a mind-controlled assassin? It has fallen to independent researchers like Pease to lay out the evidence in a clear and concise manner, allowing listeners to form their theories about this event. Pease places the history of this event in the context of the era and provides shocking overlaps between other high-profile murders and attempted murders of the time.

We have reached a state of utter absurdity, where journalism schools teach students that their own personal truth or chosen narratives matter more than reality. In Slanted, Attkisson digs into the language of propagandists, the persistence of false media narratives, the driving forces behind today's dangerous blend of facts and opinion, the abandonment of journalism ethics, and the new, Orwellian definition of what it means to report the news.

Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink offer the most valuable practical writing advice today. Building on their own research in behavioral science, they outline cognitive facts about how people actually read and distill them into six principles that will transform the power of your writing. Including many real-world examples, a checklist and other tools, this guide will make you a more successful and productive communicator. Rogers and Lasky-Fink bring Strunk and White’s core ideas into the twenty-first century’s attention marketplace.

The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind; what we call craft is informed by their cultural values. In this bold and original examination of elements of writing - including plot, character, conflict, structure, and believability - and aspects of workshop - including the silenced writer and the imagined reader - Matthew Salesses asks questions to invigorate these familiar concepts. He upends Western notions of how a story must progress.

Terrified of speaking in front of a group? Or simply looking to polish your skills? No matter where you are on the spectrum, this guide will give you the confidence and the tools you need to get results.

It's not easy for an entrepreneur to get a bank loan, find investors, and make it to the top of your industry. Many business owners find themselves overwhelmed in their business planning process, or even worse, they outsource the planning to an unqualified professional.