Casey Clabough - Creative Writing

No one likes a know-it-all. Most of us realize theres no such thinghow could there be? The world is far too complicated for someone to understand everything there is to know. So when you come across a know-it-all, you smile to yourself as they ramble on because you know better.

You understand that the quest for knowledge is a never-ending one, and youre okay with that. You have no desire to know everything, just the next thing. You know what you dont know, youre confident enough to admit it, and youre motivated to do something about it.

At Idiots Guides, we, too, know what we dont know, and we make it our business to find out. We find really smart people who are experts in their fields and then we roll up our sleeves and get to work, asking lots of questions and thinking long and hard about how best to pass along their knowledge to you in the easiest, most-accessible way possible.

After all, thats our promiseto make whatever you want to learn As Easy as It Gets. That means giving you a well-organized design that seamlessly and effortlessly guides you from page to page, topic to topic. It means controlling the pace youre asked to absorb new informationnot too much at once but just what you need to know right now. It means giving you a clear progression from easy to more difficult. It means giving you more instructional steps wherever necessary to really explain the details. And it means giving you fewer words and more illustrations wherever its better to show rather than tell.

So here you are, at the start of something new. The next chapter in your quest. It can be an intimidating place to be, but youve been here before and so have we. Clear your mind and turn the page. By the end of this book, you wont be a know-it-all, but your world will be a little less complicated than it was before. And well be sure your journey is as easy as it gets.

Mike Sanders
Publisher, Idiots Guides

ALPHA BOOKS

Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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International Standard Book Number: 978-1-615-64525-1
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2013957747

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Introduction

Creative writing is generally understood to be writing that comes from the imagination, or writing that isnt factual. Its the very fine art of making things up, in the most attractive, apt, and convincing way possible. Its the telling of lies in order to reveal illuminating and dark truths about the world and our place in it.

Some creative writing is partly inspired by real events or based on biographies or autobiographies, such as Jack Kerouacs On the Road or Sylvia Plaths The Bell Jar, and the extent to which real life and real people can sometimes directly or indirectly inform creative work. Write about what you know is the writers maxim that has long since fallen into a crashing clichbut its a clich for a good reason. Many writers do precisely that. Nonetheless, such creative writing remains in essence a fiction and makes no actual claim to the facts.

Creative writing came late to the educational realm as something thats written about and taught. The first textbooks did not appear until the early 1900s, and the first educational programs were developed in the 1950s. Before those years, the great writers youve heard of learned primarily by reading extensively, copying other writers, and regularly writing on their own. Today, however, creative writing is a popular area of study in high schools and colleges, and publishing it can be very competitive. At the same time, electronic media has made it possible for people to self-publish their own work. You might say were in the midst of a transitional era between book-based creative writing and that which is published only in electronic format.