Marge Piercy - So You Want to Write

Table of Contents

Critical Raves for: SO YOU WANT TO WRITE

A Selection of the Writers Digest Book Club

A Best Book of the Year for Writers Selection

A how-to written by a popular novelist and a successful publisher, this fine book is a distillation of the wisdom they have accumulated and dispensed over the years. The focus here is on technique. They start at the beginning with story openings and move smoothly through character building, the importance of dialogue and plot, and how to craft compelling narrative passages.

Those not lucky enough to have participated in the workshops can now benefit from their no-nonsense wisdom. Eschewing the current trend in process-based writing classes and guides, Piercy and Wood urge writers to read critically and read often; to ask themselves specific, exacting questions about their characters and plots; to complete the books writing exercises; to do research in order to make a piece of writing believable; to participate in some community of writers; and numerous other practical steps. Readers will appreciate the hardcore approach of these two dedicated writers.

The authors conduct well-known writing seminars, and they have put much of this information into book form. They address all the elements of successful writing. They also go into work habits, overcoming the inner censor and dealing with publishers. A good primer for new writers; a fine reference book for any writer.

Best-selling writer Piercy and novelist/publisher Wood have been co-teaching writers workshops for years and have reproduced their master course in this useful manual. The two authors encourage would-be writers to read as much as possible (included is a list of recommended books) as reading plays the key role in the process of learning how to write. Their exercises are short and to the point, just enough to get the juices flowing. This book, although joining an already saturated market is worth the shelf space.

Seamless and exceptionally engaginga valuable tool for the apprentice in search of practical advice on the craft of fiction and memoir writing from accomplished novelists.

This new column, The Writing Life, helps to choose the best [of the how-to-write books] ... Writers seriously looking to have their work published should pick up So You Want to Write. Woods advice on getting your work published is extremely helpful and worth the cost of the book alone.

An Introduction to the Second Edition

This book is a product of workshops we have given together for many years and the thousands of writers we have worked with over that time. One of the many lessons weve learned is that effective workshops arent performances but dialogs that expand and evolve, reflecting not only the knowledge of the leaders but also the interests of the writers who participate. Weve discovered that no two workshops are ever alike. No matter the material we came prepared to cover, writers in our workshops were of many levels of experience and worked in different genres. They had different needs and questions about their work. Releasing a Second Edition of So You Want to Write has enabled us to include a variety of of topics that weve developed since the original publication. Youll find new chapters on short story writing, genre writing (historical, science fiction, and mystery), humor writing, selecting a title, and how to avoid writing like a victim; many new writing exercises and examples; a personal essay on the illusions of fame; a section on the career pitfalls that many writers fall into; additions such as the writing of sex scenes and how to characterize emotion; and a lot of new information that comes from our personal give and take with writers, reflected in the updated Frequently Asked Questions and Practical Information sections.

We usually teach personal narrative or fiction together, but each of us has also taught a version of both courses alone. In actual team-taught workshops, we divide up the topics, but we have each worked on every essay in this book. The I throughout the manuscript is one or the other of us; we felt it did not really matter which, and was less awkward than the royal we when speaking of something one of us wrote or did.

In workshops, we use examples from many writersbut the problem of paying for permissions has led us to use only our own work or those of writers published by our press, Leapfrog. It is not egotism but the desire to keep the price of this book down that has led us to quote so freely from ourselves.